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I've looked for a guide for my setup and am having a hard time finding one, so I'll ask you guys.

Ok here's the situation:

I have my roomate moving in next week, and he's gonna want internet. I plan to share my broadband connection thruogh a home network. The only broadband option in my town is basically a huge 802.11b wireless network hooked up to a bunch of T1s. The problem is the transceiverI use to connect to my isp only has an usb connection, thus I can't run it into a switch without converting it to lan first. A router for the connector the antenna uses is like $500, so thats out of the question.

My question is, would I be able to run the usb transceiver into an older comp with windows 2000 or Xp pro on it, turn on Internet sharing, then run lan cable from it to a switch, then to my computer and his? If I did do it this way, would all of our p2p programs (ie: online games, instant messaging, kazaa) still work? Also would I be able to set up an upload limiter, and d/l limiter on the converter comp? What kind of firewall do you guys recommend that can be left alone for long periods of time? Also is this the best way to go about this, or is there a better way?

I've never set up a home network before, any help, or links would be greatly appreaciated.

It should work just fine like that, so long as you set up the connection sharing options correctly. I've used Windows 2000 Server and Windows XP Professional before for routing, using a similar setup to what you're describing, and they worked beautifully. As for limiting downloads and uploads, and what firewall(s) is(are) best, I'm afraid I don't really know, heh.

we got a p 266 with 128mbs ram with win xp on it running our internet through it, it runs esafe firewall/antivirus and this setup works perfectly. we have 3 other computers.

Number41: An example below:

All pc's plug into you switch including the pc you'll use as the ICS server, the only thing not pluged into the switch would be the USB 802.11b bridge itself.

Your internal Network will use a private range of ip addresses. Something from the 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/16, or 192.168.0.0/16 networks. For simplicities sake we'll use the following configurations for each computer.

We'll use static addressing on each windows PC.

PC 1:
IP address: 192.168.0.1
Subnet / Net mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.0.254
DNS: (provided by isp)

PC 2:
IP address: 192.168.0.2
Subnet / Net mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.0.254
DNS: (provided by isp)

PC 3:
IP address: 192.168.0.3
Subnet / Net mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.0.254
DNS: (provided by isp)

PC w/ the USB 802.11b adapter:
Internal NIC that is plugged into the switch: 192.168.0.254
Subnet / Net mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: IP address of the usb 802.11b adapter (ipconfig will show you this)

The only other thing left that you'll need to do is enable ICS or "internet connection sharing" (Microsoft's NAT implementation) on the server.

Pretty straight forward. If the above doesn't paint a solid enough picture google around a bit, you've got a really common setup - don't sweat it.

Ok thanks for your help guys!

But i still want to know if it is possilble to limit upload and d/l speeds on the comp with the 802.11b adapter to each computer on the network. So one comp doesn't hog all the bandwidth.

Thanks again.