Your friend is very confused. NAT devices (which Linux can do for you) hide the IP addresses & names of your computers. In practice they don't actually "hide" it as much as they replace the connection so to speak.
Packets going out to the internet are "re-addressed" so that they all appear to be coming and going to one authorized device. Even Winblow's Internet Connection Sharing does this (albeit POORLY!!!). So there is no need to authenticate more than one machine. @home works fine with this configuration and if you wanted to you could theoretically hook up your neighborhood to your one connection... But that's another matter. Many (now cheap) DSL and Cable modem "router" devices which support "connection sharing" or "NAT" will perform this function for you. Linux, however, does it right in that you can incorporate a lot of things which will act to cut down on needless bandwidth usage. Squid, DNS, Ipchains, etc. all act to increase the apparent speed by cutting down on the need to send actual traffic to your ISP. -JMS |-----Original Message----- |From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Todd Zashin |Sent: Friday, November 02, 2001 5:19 PM |To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |Subject: [expert] cable modem question | | |I saw some communication regarding cable modems and I wanted |to chime in with a question I have. Please give me some |leniency as I know this is not directly Linux Mandrake but you |guys always have the best answers so I thought I would quickly ask. | |I have a friend who wants to use AT HOME to share his Internet |Connection between two PCs thats it. He wants both PCs to use |the Internet at the same time with one AT HOME connection. I |told him he could do this via a Linksys EtherFast Cable Dsl |Router 4 port. My other buddy tells me that there is no way |that this is possible because the way our cable company has |the internet service setup. The AT HOME service assigns you a |computer name that you must enter on your PC. So, my buddy |says there is no way you can share the connection because how |are you going to have the router know the computer name. My |answer to him was DHCP. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. |That you could make the Linksys box get the IP from the Modem |and then send that information onto the client. |
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