Sharing My internet connection?

[Michael K]

Just buy a router (like Linksys) and set it up to connect out as a PPPOE. The manual should guide you through the configuration then all you have to do is hard wire or connect the PCs wireless to the router and set them to obtain an IP address automatically (Dynamically) or you could configure them manually by picking IPs in your subnet. Once they are able to link with the Linksys, your WAN connection should be split to all of your local addresses using NAT. A Hub or Switch will only network your PCs locally but this wont split the WAN connection up to three PCs. So with either of the two, you'd have to have a separate PPPOE login and username for each computer or else only one could login simultaneously (depending on how your provider has the network setup). Hubs are less secure that switches because all the local network traffic shares the same channel and therefore all you have to do is have a sniffer on the local network and you can pretty much catch any and everything out there. So a router would be the best and secure way to configure your network, especially if you only have one WAN configuration for your PPPOE. - In which case it would be the only practical way to achieve your goals. You could use Microsoft ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) Service but this would require you to have the computer online 24/7 to guarantee access to the internet for the other computers.