Windows XP: Internet Connection Sharing

On some countries, more and more families have 2 (or even 3) PC's:
- one for the parents, used for business work
- one for the children, to play (and to do some school-work......)
Also in small office (without a big central fileserver acting as proxy-server), several people
need to connect to the Internet, but not everybody has a modem in this system or there
maybe are not sufficient phone-extensions available on the telephone-switchboard.

First introduced with Windows98 SE and continued in Windows 2000, also Windows XP
Home and Professional include :
Internet Connection Sharing ( ICS )

Before you try to use the Windows XP Internet Connection Sharing on an office network,
be aware of the possible limits :
Windows 2000 allows up to 10 (= TEN ) computers to simultaneously share a single connection,
either dial-up or broadband , to the Internet, and all Knowledge base articles on ICS for
Windows XP state "home use and small office", so I assume the same limit as for
Windows 2000 may also apply to Windows XP.

The system with the modem or broadband-interface, establishing the connection to the Internet,
is called the "ICS Host", while the other systems, which connect now to the Internet via the
network and the ICS-Host, are called "ICS Clients".

The setup of ICS on Windows XP is very similar to ICS on Windows 2000, which you can view
for full details and client connectivity ( like : Windows 98/98 SE/ME as an ICS client ) :

	In the properties of the Network connections, right-click on your Internet connection and select "Properties"
	on the tab: "Advanced", you can activate "Internet Connection Sharing", and select, whether the connection would be established automatically if one of the connected client systems tries to connect to the Internet.
	Warning: when using the ICS, Windows XP changes now the IP-address of your network card for the LAN to the default IP-address for an ICS-host: 192.168.0.1 You will need to configure your other computers to use the same subnet (192.168.0.x ) or to "Obtain the IP-address automatically", because as ICS-host, Windows XP will now act as DHCP-server.
	You can check in the Properties of your LAN connection, tab : Status that your IP-address has been modified to 192.168.0.1.

I keep this documentation short, there is a very good and detailed setup description on the
Microsoft website in the Knowledge Base article Q306126, which even includes a few movie-files
with sound showing it in detail ( just right-click on the movies and select "Play")