Windows 2000 ICS Usage

Once the Windows2000 ICS Host and ICS Client are configured, you are ready to use it.

Once you run on the ICS Client a program trying to access the Internet, the ICS Host will
connect to the Internet. However be aware of the following:

It takes some time to make the connection via a modem, usually more time than most programs
are configured to wait, so they will report a problem when started up and the ICS Host is currently
not connected to the Internet.

Example:

On the ICS client, I made a PING to
an Internet Website.
This caused the ICS Host to make the
connection to the Internet, but PING
"gave up" before the connection was
established and reports an
"Unknown Host", since it was not able to
get from a DNS-server the IP-address.

Running the PING command again
results in proper DNS-lookup and PING
reporting the reply-times.

You will have the same with starting up Internet Explorer:

Usually, Internet Explorer will "give up" and report that "a page cannot be displayed" before
the ICS Host was able to establish the connection to the Internet.
Just wait a fw seconds and then click on "Refresh".

Note: the Internet URL
"www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir....."
is usually called up automatically
by Internet Explorer to check for udates.

You can deactivate this check in the
Internet Explorer Properties on the
Tab: Advanced.

Note: For connection to some Internet providers,
(like: CompuServe or UUNET), it is required
to configure the Dial-up networking connection
with a script.

To view the status of making a connection,
you can select to "Show terminal Window",
showing some more info during connection:

That works fine when making on the ICS Host first manually the connection to the Internet.
But when NOT being connected and starting up Internet Explorer, which licks off that now
the system makes the connection to the Internet, there is a problem:

The connection fails with "Unable to connect because of a configuration error".

And when trying to connect from an ICS Client, it will not even start to make a connection.

Solution: deactivate the display of the Terminal Window.