Ok... I have a cable modem... 1 NT Server (2 nics) 3 Workstations I keep hearing I will need either a proxy or some NAT software on the NT Box to share my connections... Why won't THIS work... NIC #1 is attached to the cable modem and assigned a static IP address (from my ISP).. we'll use 192.168.50.10 for our example.. NIC #2 is attached to a hub and assigned an address I made up... 10.40.50.10... and the default gateway is set to 192.168.50.10. (the address of NIC#1) Each workstation is attached to the hub.. and assigned IP addy's like 10.40.50.11, 10.40.50.12 and so on... and their default gateway is set to 10.40.50.10. Why couldn't I share an internet connection that way? Thanks, Billy

You need something to act as the router to do Network Address Translation (NAT). A 2000 server or workstation works great with 2 nics installed on it. Or you can actually pick up a switch/hub at Best Buy for around $100.00 that will work. I do this at home. You will not be able to do it the way you want. The server that has the 192. network will not know how to resolve the requests to the 10. network.

Your example is a little misleading, the 192.168.0.0 network is a private address. Even if you had used a public IP address for your example, it still wouldn't matter. The rest of the machines in your network are using a private address too (10.0.0.0). Private IP addresses are not intended to be directly connected to the Public Internet. When you use a machine with a valid public IP address as a gateway to the public internet, you have 2 choices: the machines that are using this as a gateway must have public IP addresses or the machine that is acting as a gateway must be able to act as a proxy or translate the private Ip to it's public IP. There are a several solutions, the router mentioned in the other post, or proxy software on your server. Other Operating systems can solve the problem with Internet Connection Sharing software or NAT software...

I would get a hub with an uplink port, 2 NIC in the NT Server. Plug the NT Server into the uplink port, and one other port ofn the hub. This way, the NT server should see both the internet and the "Internal" part of your network. Then use the IP address from this as your gateway. You'll want to install Microsoft Proxy Server for NT on the NT Server, and have your internal network (I would set these up with 192.168.x.x addresses, use this NT Server as the gateway to the net. You could use DHCP services (if there is such a beast for NT Server - not sure, as I use a Mac with IPnetrouter for my DHCP router) or get a commercial DHCP routing program to automatically assign computers on your network IP addresses within a certain range, but I would still recommend using 192.168 for your internal network and just have these machines point to the NT server as your internet gateway. The NT server could then also act as a file sharing / transfer station as well, especially if it has a large hard drive (recommended). I have a similar setup to the one described above for a Mac / PC combo network, and it runs great with an NT Server routing internet, and a Mac dolling out DHCP addresses. Email me for more information if required.