Sharing connection between computers in different buildings

I'm looking for solutions to a couple of networking problems

1) I have a house under construction. About 600 feet away is a
shop/office/guest house. I'd like to network the computers in both
buildings. Between the two buildings I have conduit with some RG6 and
Cat5 in it. I also have a spool of RG8 or RG11 (not sure which, but
definitely bigger than RG6) that a friend gave me. It was used as a
temporary cable connection before his cable company buried the real
line.

From what I've been able to learn, it doesn't seem like I can run
Ethernet over copper for that distance. I know there are pricey
devices that will convert from Cat5 to fiber and back, so that might
work, but I'd have to pull fiber through the conduit and have it
terminated, and the price might be prohibitive by the time I add the
devices on each end.

I'm wondering if I can set up Internet Connection Sharing and use a
serial connection (RS-485?) to share the broadband access.

2) The house is in a rural area, so I have no DSL, no cable modem. I
think DirecPC/DirecWay will probably be the answer. There are DirecPC
routers, but they cost about $1,000 I believe. So I think I'll have
to run from the dish to the main PC and put the DirecPC modem(s) on
that. Then connect the NIC to a router and use ICS to let the other
computers in the main house share the DirecPC connection.

Can I mix and match a serial connection on one computer with Ethernet
connections on the other computers and have them all use ICS
successfully to access the broadband gateway computer?

The other solution I'm investigating is fixed wireless. I don't know
if it's available in the area (Calvert County, MD, near Calvert
Cliffs). Would each computer have to have a separate account, or
could one account be shared?

Any suggestions, pointers, and/or advice would be appreciated.

Steve

On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 04:23:43 GMT, What? Me Worry? <AlfredENewman.TakeThisOut@Example.com>
wrote:

  > I'm looking for solutions to a couple of networking problems
 >
 >1) I have a house under construction. About 600 feet away is a
 >shop/office/guest house. I'd like to network the computers in both
 >buildings. Between the two buildings I have conduit with some RG6 and
 >Cat5 in it. I also have a spool of RG8 or RG11 (not sure which, but
 >definitely bigger than RG6) that a friend gave me. It was used as a
 >temporary cable connection before his cable company buried the real
 >line.
 >
 >From what I've been able to learn, it doesn't seem like I can run
 >Ethernet over copper for that distance. I know there are pricey
 >devices that will convert from Cat5 to fiber and back, so that might
 >work, but I'd have to pull fiber through the conduit and have it
 >terminated, and the price might be prohibitive by the time I add the
 >devices on each end.
 >
 >I'm wondering if I can set up Internet Connection Sharing and use a
 >serial connection (RS-485?) to share the broadband access.
 >
 >2) The house is in a rural area, so I have no DSL, no cable modem. I
 >think DirecPC/DirecWay will probably be the answer. There are DirecPC
 >routers, but they cost about $1,000 I believe. So I think I'll have
 >to run from the dish to the main PC and put the DirecPC modem(s) on
 >that. Then connect the NIC to a router and use ICS to let the other
 >computers in the main house share the DirecPC connection.
 >
 >Can I mix and match a serial connection on one computer with Ethernet
 >connections on the other computers and have them all use ICS
 >successfully to access the broadband gateway computer?
 >
 >The other solution I'm investigating is fixed wireless. I don't know
 >if it's available in the area (Calvert County, MD, near Calvert
 >Cliffs). Would each computer have to have a separate account, or
 >could one account be shared?
 >
 >Any suggestions, pointers, and/or advice would be appreciated.

With respect to your routing questions: once the system with the modem has a
tcpip connection with the wan host, you should always be able run a NAT agent
on that same machine on behalf of the rest of your computer fleet. It
shouldn't make any difference whether that WAN connection is over a dial-up, a
dsl modem, a cable modem, or a satellite modem (btdt - for all but the
satmodem. No problems, mon).

That NAT agent could be ICS, Wingate (or whatever it's called), SON (or
whatever *that's* now called) or a stripped-down Linux install running the
Linux NAT agent. Any of them will allow you to stick a second network card in
that same system to become the host of your private subnet, with all your
other computers connected via hub or switch to that network adapter.

As for alternatives to the 10/100 layer: I believe that any MS OS that
supports ICS will also support DCC over a serial link. I don't have first-hand
experience in such matters, however, so I can't validate the presumption that
a DCC "client" can connect to ICS as a client on the same host.

But even if that *did* work, I suspect it could only support a single DCC
client (maybe 2K server would do more if you had the extra com ports).
Meaning, you'd have one system cable-modemed to the outside world and hosting
ICS sessions to a single DCC client. That's a total of 2 systems that could
reach the internet - and the DCC client 600 feet away on a serial line
probably isn't surfing very quickly at that (you'd at least have to convert to
a current loop I suspect).

Given all that, I'd investigate external antennas for a wireless B or G bridge
as a private segment behind an ICS or other NAT host to weigh the
price/practicality of that solution to a pair of media convertors and 600 feet
of buried, terminated fiber...

/daytripper<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->