setting up windows network (sorry)

[mis]

Ok I am confused. Do I have to have 2 cards in one machine and 1 in the reast? I thought if I had everything connected to the hub each could see the rest. As it stands I have the cable modem connected to the hub and 1 card in each PC also connected to the hub. Am I missing something or just trying to do this all wrong?

Thanks and sorry for asking this here.

Mis

[bdl]

Now listen here missy! This aint no place to be posting winders questions!

Seriously now, what exactly do you want to do? If you have a machine that you want to act as a firewall/gateway for your internal network, then yes you have to have 2 NICS on that machine. One acts as the interface for the external connection, e.g. your cable connection, while the other has a private class C address (read: 192.168.X.X) and shares the connection between your internal network. Plugging everything into a hub should work alright, but both NICS on the gateway will still have to plug into the hub, and the cable modem is going to have to have a 'straight cable', vs a 'crossover cable' that more than likely came with it. With me so far? Ok, so heres what a 3 machine network would look like:


one: gateway/firewall - 2 NICS
external IP / 192.168.0.1

two: workstation - 1 NIC
192.168.0.2

three: workstation - 1 NIC
192.168.0.3

The internal IP addresses can all interact with each other via the hub and the external address spends most of its time using ipchains or iptables to masq the connection for the internal machines. This is obviously a quick and dirty example, if you could post some specifics I could point you in the right direction.

[mis]

I just want to be able to access each of the computers. Like being able to store everyones mp3s on my drive. If it matters I am apparently using dhcp in windows.

[Cuthbert]

YEs, you can do that (share all your mp3's) but because you cannot route a cable or dsl connection through a hub you will still need two nics in the gateway/firewall machine (set up as bdl said above) if you want all of those machines to have internet accesss.

Or you need to go and buy a router.

[Linuxneophyte]

Wait, so are your other machines (besides the host) able to share the internet connection already? And you just want to be able to see other computers and drives on the network?

If that's the case you just need to go to Network Neighborhood and look for the other machines. If you don't see them, you might need to make a workgroup name or something, and make sure File and Printer sharing is installed in the network section of control panel (which I'm sure it is). Also you need to enable sharing on the drives I'm pretty sure. Right click on the harddrives and I think there's some selection like sharing or properties. I'm not on Windows at the moment so I can't check.

[mis]

Don't really have a host. And I am not looking at making a router/firewall either. As it stands now this is how it is connected


hub
/ | \
pc1 pc2 pc3

Each with its on IP address. I do however have a router that I can put it this setup if someone can tell me how.

Mis

[bdl]

If all you wish to do is share files between the machines, you probably just want to switch on 'File and Print Sharing' under Network options. You can either go through the Control Panel --> Network or simply right-click on "Network Neighborhood" or "My Network Places" (depending on which version of Win you have). You may or may not have to switch on the IPX protocol. TCP/IP should work fine for this; if you've already assigned IP's to the machines, and each machine has an appropriate 'name' then it should be a simple matter of clicking on File sharing and then rebooting each machine.
Here's (http://www.resnet.ucsb.edu/information/howtos/neighbor.htm) a little online tutorial I found.

I should mention, while I'm at it (and since I'm a big Linux advocate anyway) that you could share MP3's with the other machines under Linux as well. You might export a directory(s) with MP3's on a central box that you can mount and access with the other machines, or you might try using the MP3 server software available and stream MP3s over the network. Just a thought. Post back and let us know if you get it working. Luck!

[mis]

I am using DHCP so I can not assign IP's can I? Wont' that interfer with @home? The way it stands, I did the home networking thing that came with ME and it went through everything but in the setup there are 2 options, one is that this computer uses another to connect to the internet and the other is that this one is a direct connection to the internet using my nic card. The last one is the one I choose. I did this on the g/f puter also. Right now if I go into network neighborhood and choose the workgroup that I set for both I can only see the one I am on. In reading some on line it mentioned setting up the properties of the tcp/ip -> nic card. I do not have this on either PC, I only have the original tcp/ip one. Is this the problem? I can't believe I am having this much trouble doing something in windows. I REFUSE to let ME win on this. I will try the IPX protocol now, let you know.