Unlike most ISP's, AOL won't allow you to connect to the Internet
via Dial Up Networking or any of Window's usual network interfaces
- you're forced to use AOL's own bloated and buggy dialer. This
makes the usual home network internet sharing setup near-impossible.
There is one solution for this problem - a proxy server.

Internet Sharing Through A Proxy Server

The answer is installing a proxy server on the host computer (the
computer that connects directly to AOL).

I recommend AnalogX. It's
small and very easy to setup and use, plus its FREE. Download
it here.

Installing and Running AnalogX

After installation, simply run AnalogX. There is nothing to configure
in AnalogX, all you have to do is configure the web browsers of
each computer sharing the Internet connection.

The example below shows the proxy configuration for Mozilla Firefox.
In this example, the host computer's IP address is 192.168.0.1.

The web (HTTP) proxy is on port 6588.

(Note: If you're using a Pocket PC PDA, Mozilla's free Minimo web
browser allows you to configure web proxy settings (unlike Pocket
IE))

If other users on your network want to use AOL Instant Messenger,
MSN Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger - the easy way would be to point
them to e-messenger.net.
E-messenger.net allows you to use instant messenger over the web.

AnalogX has FTP, E-mail and SOCKS4 proxies as well. Use them where
applicable.

You can even use file sharing applications like Limewire or BitTorrent through a combination
of AnalogX's SOCKS4 proxy and SocksCap. More on that in another
article!