Chapter 4: Sharing That Precious Internet Thing
In This Chapter
Finding out how Internet sharing works
Choosing between hardware and software Internet sharing
Connecting your Macs to a cable/DSL router
Adding wireless support to a shared Internet connection
Although I discuss lots of fun stuff that you can do with your network in previous chapters, this has to be my favorite: sharing a single Internet connection between all the computers on your network. If you have more than one computer, I’m sure that you’ve had to deal with the dilemma that pops up whenever more than one person wants or needs to access the Internet at the same time.
Luckily, because small home and office local area networks (LANs) use our old friend TCP/IP for network communications, connecting an entire network to the Internet isn’t as troublesome a task as you might think. In this chapter, I talk about different hardware and software options for sharing your Internet connection as well as how to include your wireless devices. (Read Chapter 1 of this minibook for the lowdown on TCP/IP and LANs.)
Sharing the Internet ...