"0.1" and "2.1" should be considered "gateway" addresses, as you have
discerned. Therefore you must refrain from assigning any gateway address to
your computer; the gateway is probably a router downstairs in the hotel
lobby. No two ip HOSTS (a.k.a. "nodes," or "leaf items") that have any
chance of "seeing each other" can have the same ip address. Yet hosts must
be informed of the nearest gateway address, so that they might direct
INTERNET petitions to that gateway, for eventual connection through the
world's conglomeration of IP routers.
To deviate a bit, NETWORKS have addresses, too. In reality, any such
"address" is really a band (or collection) of addresses that span the subnet
defined by your subnet mask. But for the sake of simplicity, your local
("private," by the way) network may be described as 192.168.0.0. You are
almost certainly engaging Class C addressing, typified by a 255.255.255.0
subnet mask. This is very common "INTRANET" addressing (not internet)
addressing, when you're inside the hotel LAN. The gateway demarcs the
intranet from the internet.
To answer your question, I would say that your "near" computer is acting as
a BRIDGE, and apparently you enable that bridge only if (necessarily, but
not sufficiently) ICS (internet connection sharing) is enabled. Thus your
near computer has two ethernet connections within it, ON THE SAME SUBNET.
Routers connect different subnets; bridges connect segments that share a
common subnet.
Any corrections to this explanation, from resident experts on this usegroup,
are welcome.
"inenewbl" <inenewbl@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news

965069B-0AD6-412F-A842-7DEEC9B6521C@microsoft.com...
> Hi all. I am currently staying in a hotel with my colleague and our room
has
> only 1 lan connection. I connected my notebook to the lan connection. My
> notebook is also connected to my colleague's notebook using adhoc
wireless.
> Initially i set my notebook wireless network with an ip of 192.168.2.1 and
my
> colleagues wireless ip as 192.168.2.2 with the gateway set as 192.168.2.1.
I
> have also added a static ip for dns address to my colleague notebook. My
> colleague could connect to my notebook via wireless adhoc however he could
> not access the internet. Finally i had to enable ics on my lan connection
> after which my wireless is assigned an ip of 192.168.0.1 by winxp. I then
had
> to change my colleague wireless ip to 192.168.0.2 with the gateway
> 192.168.0.1. Hence my question is why must i enable ics checkbox before my
> colleague could access internet. Before enabling ics, i have the correct
> settings already, when my notebook receive data from my colleague notebook
> headin for internet it shld go thru the lan connection gateway since that
is
> the default route. Thks in advance.