Hello all,

During my unanswered posts tracking I'm seeing rather a lot of threads posted to the wireless and networking forum about sharing an internet connection on a home network (ICS). I'm sure there are many reasons for the increase in these posts. Maybe it's because we are seeing a growth in users with multiple computers who can't afford or simply don't want to buy a switch/router, who knows?

What it does indicate is that either the current method is too hard for new users, the documentation is not good enough or it's just too difficult to find.

The first of these can probably be dealt with by helping users through the process on an individual case by case basis, but this takes a lot of resources. So ideally I think it would be best to try and improve the documentation we already have and make it more accessible.

The best of the current documentation that I have found are as follows.

This wiki page contains a wealth of information, but it suffers from bad formatting and is in great need of a clean up. The difficulty is in clarifying the material without sacrificing depth. Initially I pointed most users to Firestarter, as that's what I first used. Unfortunately it doesn't work in all cases and can sometimes create even more problems due to the restrictive firewall rules. Though it's still the easiest solution to former windows users.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...nectionSharing

I found this wiki page only recently and found it is easy to follow but too specific in most places and lacking the formal tone of good, solid, easily translatable documentation.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ea...nectionSharing

This wiki page is more generically focused on configuring a router and as such is a little beyond the scope of what a simply ICS guide should contain. Though it is well written and does provide some good background information and examples.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Router

There is also this excellent forum thread that contains a great script for automating the configuration of NAT and port forwarding. It is however a little verbose for beginners.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=111972

Of course this functionality should be built in to GNOME's network-admin capplet or Network Manager, indeed I believe it has been discussed on the mailing lists. However, until a proper solution is found I think it would be a good idea to create a central resource from the above guides. Perhaps a clean up of the main ICS page in the wiki?

Anyone willing to help?

Thanks