What Is ICS?

[scubagal]

Reading thru lots of the posts in this forum, I keep coming across the acronym ICS. I would love for someone to tell me what it is and what it does. Thanks.:wave:

[bAdWaYz]

Hiya Scubagal,

ICS stands for "Internet Connection Sharing". Its built into windows 2k,XP, and you can install it on 98. They don't say this but IMHO ICS is a very basic NAT app. NAT or network address translation as you may already know allows the user to share one ip address between several computers. This gives you a public ip "normally given by the isp" then gives each computer in your network a private internal ip such as 192.168.1.X the NAT seamlessly translates the private ip's over the internet. Some good things about ICS are that its often easier to config than a proxy. ICS works well for online games, and its easy to expand. The worst drawback to ICS at least IMO is that the computer running ICS must be on for the other computers on the network to access the internet. This makes the network as a whole pretty inflexable.

[scubagal]

Thanks for the info. Now I can read and understand a little better what others are talking about.

[thelamberts]

Hi there

For a great site for technical terms and acronym definitions go here

http://www.webopedia.com

Take Care