Prior to Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10), setting up internet connection sharing (ICS) is relatively tedious and not so straightforward. There were a few methods available, some which were described here.
Intrepid shipped with Network Manager 0.7, which made it considerably easier to configure for ICS. The instructions in this post explained setting up ICS in Ubuntu Intrepid. Essentially, your Intrepid PC would serve as the internet gateway for other devices in the local network (see the diagrams below).
Connection to the internet
I have tried ICS on various combinations of internet vs. local network connections, and found it worked seamlessly.
Types of internet connections I have tested with:
- Unmanaged broadband ppp0 dial-up.
The PC is connected via bluetooth to a 3G mobilephone. The Gnome PPP application is used to for the dial-up. This type of connection is currently unmanaged from the Network Manager point of view, i.e. it would not showed up in the Network Manager Applet (nm-applet). - Managed ppp0 dial-up.
A 3G mobile broadband USB modem is used. - WiFi access point.
Connect to internet via a WiFi access point. - Wired ethernet connection to a ADSL modem router.
On the other side of ICS, I have tried both wired and wireless connections to the local network.
Prerequisite package
Dnsmasq-base package is required to enable ICS. To install dnsmasq-base package: click here or use the command below.
sudo apt-get install dnsmasq-base
Setting up wired ICS
Right-click on the nm-applet. Select “Edit Connections”.
In the “Network Connections” dialogbox, select “Wired” tab, then click “Add” button.
In the “Editing Wired Connection” dialogbox, change the text in “Connection name” to something easy to remember, e.g. “ICS eth0″. Uncheck “Connection automatically” if you don’t use ICS all the time. Select “IPv4 Settings” tab. Select “Shared to other computers”. Finally, click “OK” button.
The “Network Connections” dialogbox will now have a new entry for ICS.
Now, plug in the ethernet cable from the gateway PC to the local network. The network manager might try to set up the wired network parameters by looking for a DHCP server in the network. However, your gateway PC would serve as the DHCP server in the ICS; therefore, make sure there is no other DHCP server in the network to prevent a conflict.
Right-click on the nm-applet. Select the new ICS item you have just created. After a few seconds, you should get a popup balloon message from the nm-applet that the connection is established.
That’s it. The wired ICS should be working now.
Setting up wireless ICS
There are two things to think about before using wireless ICS.
First, the wireless hardware and/or driver on a PC is probably limited to being an “adaptor” only i.e. wireless client mode. In this case, it is not possible to use it as a WiFi Access Point. This means that you can only connect to the PC in adhoc (peer-to-peer) mode. To put it another way, you can only share the internet connection to one other PC.
Second, in adhoc mode, there might be limitation on the WiFi encryption available. For instance, I found that I could only use non-encrypted WiFi when I tried connecting between an eeePC 900 (running Intrepid) as the ICS host, and a Lenovo notebook (running Vista) as the client.
Left-click on the nm-applet. Select “Create New Wireless Network”.
In the “Create New Wireless Network” dialogbox, enter a name for the network, e.g. “ICS wireless”. You could select a “Wireless Security” and supply the passkey. However, remember that it might not work with encryption; if you are unable to make a connection, try “None”. Finally, click “Create” button.
After a few seconds, you should get a popup balloon message from the nm-applet that the connection is established. The wireless ICS should be working now.
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