Incoming connections and IP addresses

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Incoming connections and IP addresses

The incoming connections computer will assign IP addresses to the remote computers that connect to it. These addresses can be allocated in one of two ways:

  • They are automatically allocated by DHCP.

  • They are assigned based on a range of addresses that is defined in the TCP/IP properties for the incoming connection.

If you want to specify a range of IP addresses, you must provide a starting IP address and an ending IP address for the range. Network Connections calculates the number of addresses that can be used within the starting and ending addresses of the range. For more information about specifying the range, and the effects of a subnet on the address range, see Configure an incoming connection to use TCP/IP.

If the incoming connections computer is attached to another network, and the specified address range consists of a subset of IP addresses for the network to which the computer is attached, you must ensure that the addresses in the range are not already assigned to other TCP/IP nodes within the attached network. This is recommended because using a subset of the larger network's addresses requires less manual configuration of the intranet nodes.

If you must use a range of addresses that is not a subset of the network to which the incoming connections computer is attached, then steps must be taken to ensure that computers on the network attached to the incoming connections computer can reach the incoming connection clients. To do this, on each of the computers on the network you can create a route to the incoming client computers with the IP address of the incoming connections computer as the associated gateway.

For more information, see To configure a default gateway.

Notes

  • If Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) is already enabled on the dial-up, virtual private network (VPN), or local area connection of an incoming connections computer, you do not need to configure the default gateway setting. ICS automatically makes the ICS host computer the default gateway for all of the computers on the intranet.

  • Internet Connection Sharing and Network Bridge are not included in Windows Server 2003, Web Edition; Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition; and the Itanium-based versions of the original release of the Windows Server 2003 operating systems.