Internet Sharing

[gaah]

Hey!
I'm quite new to the mac world... So I might be asking dumb questions but here we go...
I want my old PC to be a server for my new macbook. I haven't really tried out file sharing but I don't think that would be any problems. However, I have the internet connection on my windows PC and I want my mac to be able to connect to, through my windows PC which has two network cards. I also have another even older PC which I run linux on and have the same setup there, my linux connects to the internet through my windows PC. Linux/PC connection works just fine, but when I enter the same info (IP, net mask, gateway) in my mac I can't connect to the internet. I can ping my windows PC from mac, but not google.com and not the IP of google either...
Please help...

 

[jeremy.king]

Have you tried using DHCP instead of manual settings? Also, any reason you don't want to invest in a cheap router - it will make your life easy?

 

[gaah]

I do use DHCP from the win PC to get online. But the private network I see no point in doing that.
hehe yeah... I have three reasons for that:
A router, no matter how cheap it is, costs money. So why buy one when I already have what I need?
I wouldn't mind to have my windows PC as a firewall to the internet so I can disable the firewall in my mac.
If you just make things easy for you, you never learn new stuff! ;-)

 

[jeremy.king]

A router, no matter how cheap it is, costs money. So why buy one when I already have what I need?

Because you have two machines (linux and mac) and only one network jack to share. My guess is you have a hub.

I wouldn't mind to have my windows PC as a firewall to the internet so I can disable the firewall in my mac.

A router would provide a firewall as well and will have features you may want to use such as port forwarding - not to mention wireless. Additionally, certain routers such as the WRT54G are very extensible and just easier to use compared to ICS in Windows.

If you just make things easy for you, you never learn new stuff! ;-)

In this case, its not just the fact its easy, its just a better option and would solve a lot of problems you are having. It would scale as your network gets bigger and would most likely be more reliable.

All that said, you don't have to be on the same subnet to ping, so that isn't going to tell you much about your internet connection. I would suggest you triple check all the network settings on both the Windows side and Mac side. Post screen shots here or summary information for all the NICs (both windows, the linux and mac) involved so people can better assist.