10.2 internet sharing is really flakey...help!

[kommakazi]

I use the built-in internet sharing feature of 10.2 to share my dial-up connection with all my computers on my home LAN. My iBook dials up, I turn on internet sharing, and all should be well. My other computers are configured to use DHCP to aquire an IP address and that also is working fine. I can mount drives from each computer on another. I can ping all computers. One problem: the internet sharing isn't working. I've played with it a million times checking, double checking, triple checking everything and it's all set up so it should work, and it worked fine before. Just last night it decided not to work anymore. I can get online with my iBook obviously since it does the dial-up, but neither my tower nor my iMac can get online. Anyone have any idea why this isn't working? Any suggestions? Anything!!! This is really pissing me off

[kommakazi]

Here's another interesting thing I just discovered: I was poking around in the Sharing preference pane on my tower and under the Internet tab it said that I had an active connection to the internet. It's not very active considering that I can't get online for the life of me.... and I don't think it's just the tower because my iMac running 9.2.2 cannot access the net either, and it got a IP from DHCP as well. The problem has to be with my iBook but I have no idea what could be wrong!

[kommakazi]

This just keeps getting better and better by the moment...
On my tower I opened up Terminal and tried pinging various domains like apple.com and macosx.com and it worked. No lost packets. Then I took it up a notch and tried to ftp. Connection refused. Basic IP connections work but anything above that refuses to work!

[kommakazi]

Or I just keep getting stupider and stupider (bad english intended )...
Turns out the Firewall was turned on on my iBook. I have no idea why nor did I think to look at it till just now in my desperation. This brings me to another question now: why would the firewall block the internet sharing?

[3mors]

Have u set DNS on the clients?

[Factor41]

I use internet sharing from my G4 to my other 2 and sometimes it just doesn't work, but if I go into the network prefs of the client and switch it to one of the other options, apply, then switch it back to DHCP, it works again. Only does it occasionally and seemingly at random. I do have the ropiest dialup known to man tho.

[Ebonit]

definately a DNS problem since there is a connection. Try if you can ping a known IP adress on the internet. probably that works. If so, just get ythe DNS settings right on all computers.

[chemistry_geek]

Do you think it's your ISP? I remember clicking on Internet Sharing just to see what would happen and a little disclaimer dropped down saying that I could be violating my ISP license agreement blah blah blah... Perhaps your ISP can detect what you're doing and prevents it. I know that even cable and DSL connections are starting to block file sharing programs ala XNAP (Open Source Napster), LimeWire (Gnutella), etc... Even colleges are blocking these file sharing clients.