Sharing internet connection but not the network.

Hi,

I have a room mate wanted to share my wireless internet connection, but i don't want to share the shared stuffs on the network. How would i do that? I know i can un-shared my stuffs but i still want another computer in the living have the access to these files on the network. Basiclly i just want to share my internet connection and nothing else. I know it's a long writing, hope this won't confuse you. Any reply will help. Thanks.

By the way, i have Netgear WGR614 wireless router with Comcast internet service.

 

Password protect the shared files?

 

how do i do that? i have winXP media edition & winXP home. Thanks.

 

I am by no means good at network setup, but:

If you already have a network setup and just wanna share your connection with your room-mate, I would just share it like every other computer, but change shared folder permissions to only allow computers you wish to have access to the folders with. Turn off simple sharing in tool, folder option, view, then right click on the share folder under permission, change it to grand access to whichever computer you see fit, and remove anything else. Also, your workgroup name is not the default is it? if it's not, he prob would not see your computer anyway unless he is trying! If it is, change it!

If you are letting your room-mate using your connection, wouldn't you be trusting him enough to not hack your computers? Plus, not everyone knows how to hack a computer, it's not like you just leave it open for everyone on the network to see, not to mention he is not connected to your workgroup.

Like zx10guy said, all his methods are valid, more secure, and from what I have been reading the forum, he seems to be a very skilled and security conscious person. It seems that it's required for what he does, and I do salute him for trying to help others with his knowledge!

I once asked my uncle who works as a software engineer at MS in Seattle,
"I heard that if you don't have any security on your network, no wpa no nothing, people can simply get whatever you have on your harddrive and steal your stuff? Is it really that easy? I mean, I can't even see my other computers if the workgroup name is different!!"

He answered by asking me a question,
"What do you have on your computer that if I am a hacker, that I would wanna go through the trouble, breaking the law and hack it to get? Do you have some top secrets on your harddrive that you are 'sharing'?"

You need to ask yourself the same question before following those more secure methods from 'zx10guy'. If the answer is different from mine, you can look into openVPN for no extra cost, but very difficult to setup if you don't know networking. I sure as heck don't know how to set it up, thought I never really look into it either, and I consider myself somewhat informed about computers.
Another would be Hamachi which is suppose to be a zero configuration tool, but it's not opensource that could have security implication "He, the author, could be doing something else you don't know if is isn't telling the truth!!!"

If you are using wireless capable router, you do have security on those like wpa, mac filtering and the whole nine yards enabled/disabled right?

I, myself believe in open source when it comes to security and only open source, ever since I read a story about police having a back door to thinkpad's TPM security chip on thinkpadforum, not sure if it's true but nevertheless.

Edit: some obvious typos and add in some line breaks for the sake of your eyes, didn't think I'd write this much

 

If your current router supports virtual lan, move your roommate's computer to a different subnet. You will not need any more hardware. Doing this will isolate the computers. Make sure your personal firewall is blocking all other subnets.

 

thank you all for replying. I will try all the methods to see which is the most easiest method.