WinXP 3 network cards, ICS possible?

Hello guys
Well after plenty hours trying to be smart arse and figure out how to share Internet connection without a hub/switch, I've decided to ask for a help from pros.

Situations is as follows:
Main PC - XP sp2 has two built in network cards, one of them (nVidia) is connected to ADSL modem, anotherone (3com) I would like to connect to the lap top. Third network is wireless Orinoco Gold card, which I'd like to share with my WiFi PDA. Until now, I was only able to ping both cards, but never access the internet. After week or so, I am really having headache - obviosly It's darn XP, and my limited knowledge of network.
My primary (nVidia) card has manually set configuration:
IP 10.0.0.150
SUB. 255.255.255.0
GET. 10.0.0.138
I've tried some combinations on the other two, and closest I got is to kill even Internet Access on nVidia
HELP! please
VladNl

 

First off, XP SP 2 has firewall software enabled automatically. This could be interfering with whatever you're doing.

With internet sharing, the PC is expecting to have to NAT from one interface to another interface. That's great, one of the cards should allow that network to get to the internet.

That brings us to the third card. Without doing something fancy, this third card is acting as an interface into a totally separate 3rd network. Just like the first two cards are acting like totally separate networks, your WAN link to the internet and LAN link to internal network. XP is doing some fancy footwork to allow anything connected to that LAN network to act to the internet as if it were coming from the XP box.

Now you've added a third NIC, and XP probably has no clue what to do about that guy. If it does, and is able to NAT that card as well, that network will have completely different IP addresses. But, this also means the wireless network won't be able to talk to the LAN network unless XP also knows NOT to NAT the addresses when those two networks are talking. My gut instinct tells me this might all be possible under XP, but it's going to be a very long painful trip to get it all configured correctly.

The smart thing for you to do, is to give up on this route completely. Buy a wireless router with a built in 4 port switch. Connect it's WAN port into the modem, connect the XP box into the 4 port LAN portion of the router, and setup the wireless network. Then everything should be able to talk to everything else, internet sharing will be done by the router, XP's security won't get in the way of the wireless network (at least on the way out to the internet), and it should be possible to get it all configured in a single afternoon.

Sticking with 3 NIC cards in an XP box may take you months.

-Scott

 

Well, I am not being cheap but broke. If I had funds I would rather set everything on 54Mbps but hey, some of us know for the money issues and some never felt that way.
So practically what you're suggesting is to give up on my intentions... Well, final idea is to connect existing wired LAN’s to wired Hub, which I've got, and to share connection on wireless only.
Actually, I am waiting for some old Pentium to arrive from friends and to build a Linux Access Point out of it.
Thanks for input, I will let you know how far I got with "impossible" project

Cheers
VladNl

 

I don't think he said it was impossible, but for $10 after rebates, it seems pretty silly not to have a broadband router...