During installation, if you're running Windows 2000/XP it's a good idea to install BPALogin as a service. After installation, run BPALogin to connect to the internet (of course, make sure that you've disconnected with the official client first). You'll need to enter some basic settings - your username and password that Telstra gave you, the local port number (make this 5050, as recommended), and your "default domain". This is the "intranet domain name" that you determined at the end of section 4.1.

The first thing to do is choose whether you want your server to be a proxy server or a NAT router. If you've ever configured your web browser to use a proxy you'll have an idea what a proxy server is - basically the server computer sets up a "pretend" web server, email server etc which the client computers connect to, and thus they indirectly connect to the internet. On the other hand a NAT (network address translation) router forwards network packets to and from clients, creating the illusion that each client is connected directly to the internet. This simplifies configuration for the clients - as far as they're concerned they're connected directly to the net! To be honest I can't think of any advantage of a proxy server over a NAT router, but I can think of many disadvantages - it's harder to set up on the server, it's harder to set up on the clients, less internet applications will work on the clients Therefore I unreservedly recommend you choose a NAT router over a proxy server.

Setting up a NAT router has 2 components - (1) installing the NAT routing software on the server, and (2) configuring the internet applications on the client computer/s.

This software is good because it is free and very easy to install. Its disadvantages are that it's not very powerful (eg it doesn't allow port mapping, which all of the other programs do - port mapping is something that you'll probably want to do later on when you get the hang of networking) and that it's said to be technically inferior in terms of speed, reliability and so on. A lot of people can't get Internet Connection Sharing to work with a USB ethernet adaptor. Overall, it's great for beginners, but if you have a USB ethernet adaptor you might need to use another program - or buy yourself another PCI network card.

Microsoft Internet Connection Sharing is very simple to install. On the server, go into the Windows Control Panel and open "Add/Remove Programs". Click on the "Windows Setup" tab, double click on "Internet Tools" and tick the box labelled "Internet Connection Sharing".

Click OK then OK again to exit out of the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel. You'll need your Windows CD. The Internet Connection Sharing Wizard will now take you through a couple of simple steps to set up sharing. Don't worry about the floppy disk the Wizard asks you for - put one in just to keep it happy, but you won't need it. When the Wizard is finished you will be prompted to restart your computer.

If you're with Telstra, and didn't install BPALogin (see above, section 7.1) there's one more thing you need to do. Telstra's computers send out a so-called "heartbeat" network signal every few minutes that attempts to open a connection on your server computer; if the heartbeat can't open this connection then Telstra assumes that you've disconnected from the internet and shuts down your connection. Unfortunately, Microsoft's Internet Connection Sharing interferes with this heartbeat signal, causing your internet connection to drop out every few minutes! Luckily there's a simple fix - download this registry patch and double-click on it to modify your Internet Connection Sharing settings to allow the heartbeat through. You only need to do this on the server computer. Note that a better solution is to use BPALogin instead of the official Telstra login client.

Now all you need to do is configure the software on the client machines (see below) and you're done!

This is very easy to set up - even easier than Internet Connection Sharing for Windows 98! As with ICS for Windows 98, it is not very powerful, and is thus most suited to beginners or those with a tight budget.

To set up Internet Connection Sharing for Windows 2000, open the Control Panel on the server computer and choose "Network and Dial-up connections". Right-click on the network card that's connected to the cable modem and choose "Properties". Click on the "Sharing" tab and tick "Enable Internet Connection Sharing for this connection". Now click "OK" and - drumroll - that's it!!

The Telstra heartbeat issue (see above) does not affect Internet Connection Sharing for Windows 2000/XP, so you don't need to worry about it. Therefore, all you need to do now is configure the software on the client machines (see below) and you're done!

This software is very popular because it's easy to use, powerful and reasonably priced.

That's it! Once your server's restarted, your client machines should be able to access the internet!

Tip: You'll probably want to go into the Sygate Manager (which loads at startup) and tell it NOT to load at startup, since it's quite annoying. You do this by clicking on the "Tools" menu and unticking Load Manager at startup. Note that the Manager and the Engine are 2 different things - it is the Engine that actually does the NAT routing; the Manager is only for configuring things. So you probably want the Engine to start when Windows does, but not the Manager

NAT32 is quite poweful, yet it's the cheapest of the commercial NAT routers. Its main advantage is its price; its disadvantages include that it's much harder to set up and that the client computer/s seem to get a slower connection than the server does.

Run C:\Nat32\Setup.exe to install NAT32 proper. The installation program is ultra-fast and for once you won't have to re-start you computer.

Now run "Configure NAT32" from your start menu. When asked to select which Interfaces you would like NAT32 to use, make sure that both your network cards are selected (if you have no other network devices you can just click "Select all"). Make sure "Create a shortcut" is ticked - this is useful for starting NAT32 later. Click "Continue..."

Next you need to configure your Interfaces. In my installation of NAT32 everything was already correct and I didn't need to change any settings. The main thing to be sure of is that the network card connected to your home network has "Secondary" ticked and "Share" unticked, whereas the network card connected to your cable modem has "Primary" and "Share" ticked.

Click through the remaining dialog boxes until you get to the console window:

Now, unfortunately, you'll need to change a couple of the TCP/IP settings that I told you to put in earlier (sorry!). Basically, on each client computer you need to open the Network Control Panel, click on "TCP/IP" (or "TCP/IP -> [name of network card]" if that's what you used before) and click on "Properties". In the "Gateway" and "DNS" sections, you need to change the "192.168.0.1" entries to "192.168.0.100" - you do this by clicking the old entry and then clicking "Remove", and then adding the new entry (ie 192.168.0.100) in the same way as you originally added 192.168.0.1. Click "OK" twice to exit the Network Control Panel and suffer yet another Windows restart.

Now you need to do configure the software on the client machines (see below) and you're done!

WinRoute is great because it is easy to install, has excellent NAT routing, and (this feature's awesome) it features a powerful built-in firewall. I would recommend it to everyone - in fact, I guess I do - but it is by far the most expensive program of the ones on this page!

Once back into Windows, double-click on the WinRoute icon in your system tray (at the bottom right of your screen). Click on the "Settings" tab. Under "Select the adapter used for Internet connection", click on "2nd network adapter..." and choose the network card that is connected to your cable modem.

If you're using Telstra, the firewall in WinRoute will interfere with the heartbeat from Telstra's computers (see above, in the Internet Connection Sharing for Windows 98SE/ME section). To get around this, you need to map some ports. In the "Advanced Settings" section, click on "Settings..." and set up these port mappings:

- if you're using the official Telstra login client: Protocol UDP, Listen port range 1024-5055, Destination port range 1024-5055, Destination IP 192.168.0.1

- if you're using BPALogin: Protocol UDP, Listen port 5050, Destination port 5050, Destination IP 192.168.0.1