OT: Need Help With Home Networking

[Puke]

carefull there narrew, while your suggestions are good, you might be causeing some problems for AT. Now i agree with you that most of the information is this thread is pretty missguided, based on incorrect assumptions, or just straight wrong. but I have to say you are taking the wrong track.

Changing to static addressing isnt going to do him any favors if he wants an easily managed network or has any adds/moves/changes later. right now, its a safe bet that his DSL device is providing DHCP. theres absolutely nothing wrong with that.

he has two windows machines. they each have their own netbios names. they will need to be in the same workgroup to be able to ping each other by netbios names, and will need to have their personal firewall software disabled.

first off, lets drop the idea that XP does not work on a network, or that you need any additional hardware. i dont know exactly what your setup looks like, but i can make some safe assumptions based on what you said:

you have two computers connected to SOMETHING. probably a hub thats built into some other device. Both computers can access the Internet, so we dont have to worry about modems or routers or any of that ****.

so we need to know how those computers are addressed. from a command prompt (start>run>cmd) you can type "ipconfig" to find out what you ip address is. each PC should have a unique address, which should be provided by your dsl modem / router / whatever. to verify those details, you can type "ipconfig /all" and verify who your DCHP server is. it should be the same for both machines. if there is none, then they already have static addresses. either way, we know your basic IP setup is right, because they can both browse the web. DONT **** WITH YOU IP SETUP IF ITS WORKING, YOU DONT KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT IT.

to test basic ip connectivity, which you should have, try pinging between the machines. "ping [ip address]" where [ip address] is the address of the target machine will do it. so if your two machines are addressed 192.168.1.10 and 192.168.1.11, and you are sitting at the .10 machine, you would type "ping 192.168.1.11" to ping the other one.

if this does not work (request times out, or destination unreachable) then you probably have a problem with personal firewall software installed on one or both machines. it is extremely unlikely that your dsl modem/router/whatever is preventing connections between ports on your internal lan. this is actually totally unheard of. not impossible, but its just too complicated of a feature to be included on most home neworking equipment. put it out of your mind.

so if the ping DOES go through then you probalby have a problem with netbios name resolution. try pinging by name instead of ip address. "ping bob" if bob is the name of your PC. if that doesnt work, double check your computer names. still not working? make sure both machines are in the same workgroup.

i'd be happy to help you troubleshoot it if you drop into #se4 before 5pm, or if you want to shoot me an email. but beware of most of the advice in this thread, its a bunch of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

[Narrew]

Wrong Puke, what I did was inside his home network (LAN), I changed nothing on the WAN side, his router will Obtain an IP address (from the cable modem) since most ISP's rarely give a permanent IP address and refresh it every few days.

Going Static is not a problem for a home network, for a company yea, it is a problem on the network management side.

My suggestion, you do not have to worry about netbios naming, firewalls or anything else. And when you say netbios, no company will use it. Netbios is an old protocol that is inefficient (the overhead that it adds to the network may not be much for a home network, but why burden your system).

[Puke]

im not going to argue with you about it son. its a dead simple configuration, and you dont need to go changing things that are not broken. home Users also dont need to worry about ip configuration when they add or move PCs.

if your COMFORTABLE with how ip works, sure you can set it up however you want. but you're trying to give a geek's configuration to someone who doesnt know the difference between a bridge and a router.

now stop being snippy.

[Gryphin]

Don't know if this will help or hurt.
I connect
two system
running XP Pro
through a
10+- year old Lynksys hub
to a
cable modem, (not DSL)>
enjoy

[Atrocities]

Oh this is very bizzar.

Ok, the Win2k PC sees and access the shared files on the XP PC. The XP PC does see the win2k PC, but is not allowed access. The Win2k PC has no passwords so I don't get it.

However, I can send files from the Win2k PC to the XP PC so I am happy. (Kind of.)

[Narrew]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Oh this is very bizzar.

Ok, the Win2k PC sees and access the shared files on the XP PC. The XP PC does see the win2k PC, but is not allowed access. The Win2k PC has no passwords so I don't get it.

However, I can send files from the Win2k PC to the XP PC so I am happy. (Kind of.)

Your issue goes back to what I was saying below. XP (and W2K for that matter) uses Permissions to allow Users to access Files/Directories on another machine. There are settings of user Groups and other stuff that, well just makes things complicated on a home network.

What I suggest is that on each machine is to make a Temp Folder and share that folder (just right click on the folder and select Sharing/Security then click the "Share this Folder on the Network" also check the "Allow network Users to make changes to my files").

BUT, only do that to one folder per machine. Sure it is a pain to move something over to your other computer, then go to that computer to put the file where you want it, but there are security features for a reason, even if people find a way around them, but no sense you makeing it easier for them.