IP Networking

I need help. I have a cable modem. It has an USB out. I didn't want to buy a router. So I hooked my WinXP computer up to the cable modem by USB. I wanted to network my Linux computer to the WinXp computer by the ethernet cards in each. The only problem is, I don't know what I need to know to do this. I've never setup a network like this. And I don't know what things mean like subnet mask, gateway, netmask, etc... I know how to go in and manually change things. But I don't know what I need to change. I think I may need to reboot my Linux computer for the changes to take effect.

I rebooted my machine and nothing. I believe there's something wrong with the config in WinXP because, the green light on the ethernet card on the linux machine comes on when I plug the cable modem into it. So I know it wants to receive data but the Windows Machine just isn't sending anything.

What do I need to do to get these computers talking to each other?

A brief outline - Configure your XP machine's IP settings. Not going into the Windows specifics here (but right click on "My Network Places", right click the LAN connection, then right click the TCP/IP and select properties - this is unix.com so won't dwell here!), but set the IP address to 192.168.0.1, subnet 255.255.255.0 and leave the default gateway blank.

Set the Linux box to use 192.168.0.1 as the default gateway and to get its IP address via DHCP. That way, you essentially set up Internet connection sharing via the XP machine acting as a gateway.

Do some reading up on networking in general, there's plenty on google. When you're ready to configure the Linux box - either use the GUI provided by your distribution, or give man ifconfig a read.

This is the same setup I use at home.

Cheers
ZB
http://www.zazzybob.com