Hi there i was wondering how to set up broadband access to a machines running 3.1. There are 10 PC's on the LAN all running windows 3.1. Could someone please explain to go about doing this.

Well, first, I'll already assume you are running TCP/IP on your LAN. Now, unless your broadband provider is going to allow you 10 ip addresses (and I doubt they will, unless you want to pay out the nose), then you'll need a cable/dsl router (or another PC) running ip masquerading (network address translation). This will allow you to get one ip address (either DHCP or a static IP) and then all the machines on the LAN can go through this router (whether a special device as in a Cable/DSL router or a PC set up to do the same thing) to connect to the internet. On the client PCs, you may not have to change anything if your default route (gateway) is already that of the PC that will become the router (if you choose to go that way). You might want to change them to use different DNS servers, since your broadband provider will likely provide some. But, each of their PCs will not need to change their ip address as they will want to stay on the local LAN, but their default route should be the router's ip address. Any questions?

I agree, routers are easiest. But personally, I use E-Smith (linux). It's EXTREMELY easy to set up and then you can have a web server, ftp server, mail server and more. It's also configurable through a Windows web browser and networking. KDog849

Also just a note. Windows 3.1 pretty much handles all network access via a DOS client that you must run/install before windows 3.1 boots. However, if you upgrade the machines to windows 3.11 Windows for Work Groups and install the TCP/IP add-on, you'll have a much, much easier time of it. Check out this link for full details on how to setup windows networking (This site also explains how to setup windows 3.1/dos in case you don't want to upgrade). http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wfw311.htm Good luck! -Michael