Windows Internet for Linux

I'm not sure where I should have posted this, but I decided to post here. I got VMWare a few days ago (for Windows) and setup a virtualmachine and set it so the OS(Debian Sarge) was using the primary machines internet connection (dial up) and the setup referred to this as NAT(Network Address Translation) so I decided that this would be a simple way to allow myself to utilize a dialup connection from a linux computer without having to go through a lot of configurations to use a modem, BUT I don't know how to setup NAT or if there is another more simpler/similar way to do this. Any help would be much appreciated.

It should automatically be accomplished.

When you set up VMWare for the VM'ed install, one of the questions should have been (and I paraphrase here), "How would you like to set up your connectivity?"

One of the choices is NAT, which basically uses the Windows connection -- whichever happens to be active -- for all ingress and egress translating some internal IP on the VM to the external IP as leased from the connection service.

I'm sorry I totally left something out, I want to have a seperate computer running windows with my ISP's login software and then connect my linux computer to it and utilize the internet connection from the windows computer.

Er, ok. Well, that has nothing to do with VMWare.

When you say 'Windows computer connect to your ISP" are you talking a broadband connection or actual dial-up?

Either way, you can create a local network, enable Internet Connection sharing on the Windows machine and voila! Your Linux box will be in the net.

How you create the network could be as simple as buying a cross-over cable (+), connecting the ethernet port of the Window machine to the ethernet port on the Linux machine and there you have it. Or, you could go out and buy a small switch -- the 5-port versions are fairly inexpensive these days.
Get a couple of normal ethernet cables and you're in business.

The important part of this equation is to enable internet connection sharing on the windows machine and to enable dhcp on the Linux. The MS box will offer DHCP addresses out to other systems looking for it, to which the linux box will respond accordingly. It will obtain a non-internet addressable IP (most likely in the 192.168 range) and network address translate everything through the gateway (windows) to the internet.

That's it.

I suggest you find one of the billion tutorials on Windows Internet Sharing, and while. you're at it, look up enabling dhcp for your variation of Linux.

Cheers.


(+) Yes, it's true that more often than not these days ethernet ports are auto sensing, which means the use of a crossover cable is deprecated. However, not being familiar with the hardware in question AND not having a good idea as to the technical ability of the poster, I opted for the easy answer.

What I was saying about VMware was it had a feature to allow use of something called NAT so the virtualmachine could use the primary machines internet connection and I was wondering how to set this up as me + linux + modems don't get along too well.

Easy. Set up VMware with NAT. Then dialup in Windows. The OS in VMware will have internet.