Hello everyone.
I've just recently downloaded the trial version of Wingate firewall. Wingate also acts as a proxy server for my home network. I've got 4 computers connecting through a fifth computer running Wind98SE and Wingate. This computer has two network cards. one connected to the cable modem and the other to the local network. The local network is connected all together using coaxial cable using T connectors and terminators respectively. My ISP requires that each additional computer connected to the internet to use a separate IP from them at a monthly charge over and above what the standard single computer service cost is. I do not wish to do this thus I am using wingate. The problem I have noticed recently is that my computers on the local network loose their internet connection. I not able to ping the gateway computer running wingate nor can I renew the ip address. However the gateway computer which has the direct connection never has once lost internet connection. Is it possible that my ISP has dectected that I am running multiple computers on my network and they can see the different MAC addresses by examining the individual packets filtered by their gateway or servers ? Or is that Wingate has detected an intrustion of some sort and has shut down all outgoing trafic from the trusted zone (local network) ? When my local network looses its connectivity I have checked the firewall log which shows no recordings of any intrusion attempts. I would really appreciate if someone might be able to shed some light on this problem ? I had the same problem when I had Win98SE ICS enabled and running Zonealarm running. Should I retire the gateway computer running Wingate and use a router instead. This would not be easy since running cables from the top level to the downstairs where the modem is located would be sort of a difficult task.