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I wounder if it's possible to send data through another computer,

I have two computers in my local network and one of them is connected to the internet, I wounder if it possible to use this internet even if it's connected to this other computer?

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3 Answers

You don't say what operating system you are using, but you can do this fairly easily with Windows. The technique is called Internet Connection Sharing.

The instructions for setting it up in XP are in this support article from Microsoft.

There's an article on ICS for Vista also from Microsoft.

I've also found a forum post on setting up ad hoc connection sharing in Windows 7.

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One thing to note here: the computer that is sharing the connection will need to be turned on if the other one wants to get online. –  Ryan Gooler Sep 30 '10 at 0:54
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Assuming you're on Windows, what you're after is called Internet Connection Sharing, ICS for short.

Microsoft has an article here on how to set it up on Vista, and they briefly explain what ICS is all about. Directions for XP and Windows 7 are very similar.

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The answers from John T and ChrisF are perfect for the condition you described but there are possibly better solutions if you tell us how is your network connected. If you have a router (or a wi-fi router) you can connect it to the internet on the WAN port and share the connection from here. This would give internet to both machines without one depending on the other machine to be on (and working) and your connection won't drop if the other machine hangs or get rebooted.

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