PCs All-in-One For Dummies®, 5th Edition

Chapter 4. Sharing Your Internet Connection

In This Chapter

• Understanding the advantages of connection sharing

• Sharing your connection by using Windows 7

• Using a wired hardware sharing device

• Using a wireless hardware sharing device

A high-speed Internet connection is a thing of beauty, especially when it's shared with everyone in your home or office over your network. After your network is set up and running smoothly, consider whether you want to share that connection through hardware or software as well as what sort of security you need in order to protect everyone on your network.

In this chapter, I discuss all the possibilities and show you how to set up Internet connection sharing within Windows 7.

Why Share Your Internet Connection?

"Don't I need a separate Internet connection for each PC on my network?" Actually, you just answered your own question: The network you installed allows for all sorts of data communications between PCs, including the ability to plug in to a shared Internet connection.

I should note here that it is indeed technically possible to share a dialup Internet connection by using the software connection-sharing feature in Windows 7. However, I don't think that you'll be satisfied with the results. (Sorry — it doesn't provide enough horsepower to handle more than one computer, and even then browsing the Web is as slow as molasses.) Therefore, I assume for the rest of this chapter that you're already using a digital subscriber line (DSL), a cable modem Internet connection, ...