Of all things, and a tribute once again to the absolutely insanely primitive state of technology in pakistan, my stupid cable modem works fine if it's all by itself, or with very simple ICS enabled. However: if all i want to do is browse the internet, i can do it from any computer on the network. But if i want to chat, or use outlook express, i've got to set a gateway on the ICS computer. And the minute i do that, it shuts off the internet. As soon as i remove the gateway, the internet browses fine again. It hadn't done this before, up till a couple days ago everything was working fine. My network is 192.168.xxx.xxx, and the ICS is obviously 192.168.0.1
So correct me if i'm wrong, but the gateway i put is the same IP. But that's beside the point, i feel, as i tried any old number in the gateway and it shuts off the internet. Complaints to Worldcall (my cable provider) fell on deaf ears. They have no notion of customer service. Their solution consists of "disable your network".
So why could this be happening, and how else can i get outlook express to send and recieve over the network without a gateway?

Hmm, are you using a router? If you are, trying accessing the router's configuration page (by typing in 192.168.0.1, 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.2.1, depending on the router you use) and enable Port Forwarding for the applications you want to use. Outlook Express uses port 25 for outbound and port 110 for inbound. The ports for chatting differs between different clients, but for Ident for IRC, you need to open port 113 for inbound and outbound. You have to forward the port to one of the computers on your network (192.168.x.[computer number]).

No i'm using a cable modem. and i can't change it. i can't access the settings. it's passworded by the company. and they won't give it to me. So if i wanted to enable this port forwarding i would need to access the settings in the modem?
Or how about if i connected the modem through LAN to a router, and then with all the other computers plugged into the router, could they then all connect straight to the internet, at least in theory?

This post has been edited by Grafitti: Jul 25 2006, 05:19 AM

You say that you need to set a default gateway on the ICS computer in order to chat or use outlook express. Why?
You say that you are able to access the internet normally for browsing. In that case your default gateway is already fine, otherwise you wouldn't be able to go outside your network.

Just for the sake of it, what is your modem's internal IP, and what are the IPs of both NICs on the ICS comp?
And...you are setting the gateway on which computer?

It's like this:
Computer with cable connection: ICS enabled.
IP address 192.168.0.1
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway 192.168.0.1

Cable Modem:
IP address 203.81.211.45
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway 203.81.211.1

My computer (for example)
IP address 192.168.0.5
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway 192.168.0.1


I have no idea why i need to set the default gateway for outlook express and chatting and not for internet explorer, but that's how it is. Now, if i take off the gateway on the ICS computer, the internet works, for both that computer and all the other ones on the network. But the above mentioned programs don't. Now if i put in the gateway, then outlook express etc, work (at least in theory, like they were workign that way up till 2 days ago). I'm very open to other ideas, or pointers as to what i'm doing wrong. I don't have 2 NICs on the ICS computer. just the one NIC to the hub, and the modem is connected through USB.