Simple home networking question ?

[afaiq]

I guess this may be a simple question to a networking expert - I am planning to set up a home network setup to share printer/disk/internet connection. The setup that I am thinking of - Cable modem hooked up to a 4 port Linksys router, and 1 linux (SuSE8.1) desktop with a local printer and my kids windoz machine and a third laptop.

The question - if all the computers are hooked up to the router, can I run Samba on linux and share printer and disk with the non Linux machines (I am pretty sure that I can share the internet connection). My confusion is because it seems that the linux box needs to be directly connected to the other machines and act as a DHCP server for it to share disk and printer ?? Am I totally offbase here. Can all the machines on the network see each other with the router in the middle?? (Obviously I have not purchased the router yet, otherwise I would have tested this out!!)

I know someone will say RTFM! but it just seems easy to ask the question;)

[Gertrude]

the router wil act as the DHCP server and the gateway, there should be no reason why you couldnt share the printer off the router or the disk space. If you are currently doing so with out it then you should be all set using it. You can still use samba as well.

[stiles]

Originally posted by afaiq
My confusion is because it seems that the linux box needs to be directly connected to the other machines and act as a DHCP server for it to share disk and printer ?? Am I totally offbase here. Can all the machines on the network see each other with the router in the middle??


Yea your kinda off base, the router isn't in the middle of your lan, it's seperating your ISP's network from your network (the 4 port side of things is just a switch or a hub). I don't know anything about Linksys routers but the only problem I can see is that the dhcp server provided wouldn't have a feature to pin an ip to a mac address for your samba server. If you can give the samba server a static ip so you don't have to reconfigure your clients if the ip changes on the samba box.

[garskoci]

I'm about 90% sure that a Netgear router will allow you mix DCHP and .... DNS. It will assign a particular address to a particular machine and/or run DHCP. If you look at the FR114P model, it has a built in print server.
I just installed one of these. It's a pretty nice router.

[Peterservo]

You have basically described the exact same scenario that I have at home, except that I run Mandrake. That should not make any difference.
My experience with the shared internet connection was almost scary in the sense that for once, something "just worked". As the poster above mentioned, the router will serve as the DHCP server. All I did was to first connect the router to my linux box and get it working which was no problem at all. I didn't have to change any config settings in my box or anything. I was able to surf instantly which is a testament to Mandrake I suppose.
I then went for all the marbles and took a wireless PC card to my wifes laptop upstairs. I was envisioning a nightmare, but all I did was to read the install guide for the Netgear adaptor, follow the instructions, and she was surfing through the router downstairs in about 15 minutes. Both of my daughters also have aging Winboxes with 98. I did the same for them with the PCI wireless adaptors and within 1.5 hours, all 4 machines were surfing through the router.
Samba, on the other hand, was a bit more tricky. In fact, I just now got that working as it should after quite a bit of reading from not only the Samba for Dummies book, but lots of sites on the web too. The good news is though, that all 3 of my "remote" machines can now print to my laser downstairs that is connected to my Linux box.

[DJBanaan]

There are a few things to keep in mind here, most cable ISP's use DHCP and they use the MAC-Adress of the NIC it as originally installed on as a sort of authentication. Therefore, your connection might not work if you hook up a device other than the original NIC (in this case the router). I'm not saying this is the case here, but it was with my ISP. I learned the hard way, it took me a full day to figure out why dhclient wasn't getting an IP adress. So I'd check it with the ISP first.

[afaiq]

Thanks for all the quick feedback. I guess, the bottom line is that if I buy the router and hook things up, it should work (Samba may require some work, eh, Peterservo!). I will try this weekend and post how it all works out !

BTW, this forum stuff is absolutely fantastic, I post a question, get reliable responses from people who have done this before, in the next few hours !!! Beats paying for technical support and listening to elevator music while waiting for someone on the other end of the phone who will not know the answer anyway!!:cool:

[andysimmons]

Originally posted by DJBanaan
There are a few things to keep in mind here, most cable ISP's use DHCP and they use the MAC-Adress of the NIC it as originally installed on as a sort of authentication. Therefore, your connection might not work if you hook up a device other than the original NIC (in this case the router). I'm not saying this is the case here, but it was with my ISP. I learned the hard way, it took me a full day to figure out why dhclient wasn't getting an IP adress. So I'd check it with the ISP first.

Pretty much any cable router, especially something mainstream, should let you spoof or at least clone the MAC address. If you HAVE already hooked up the cable modem to a NIC, double-check first to make sure that the router you plan to buy has that option.

[mage492]

Another nice bonus of a hardware router is that they're usually pretty easy to configure. We got a Linksys up and running in less than an hour, as well as having it reasonably secure. Obviously, your mileage may vary, but you shouldn't have any trouble.

Of course, you could always go with software-routers. They can be somewhat more difficult to hook up, but they're (IMHO) much more flexible. That was what we used before the Linksys.

[Gertrude]

If your ISP does require you to register the ethernet MAC address just call them up and tell them that you got a new Ethernet card. Then give them the "WAN" mac address of the router interface that is connected to the modem.

[afaiq]

Okay, a couple of hours over the weekend, and I have a Linksys router setup and all my machines connected to the network and sharing the internet connection. Interestingly enough, I did not encounter any problems with my ISP/mac address when I hooked up the router to the cable modem. I am using Comcast (formerly AT&T broadband) as the ISP.

Next step - set up Samba on my linux machine so that I can share my printer (which is hooked up directly to the linux box). Is it possible to share my linux printer with windows machines without messing around with Samba? (I am running Win ME on the networked machine)

[Peterservo]

I am pretty much a noob when it comes to this, but from what I understand, Samba is necessary in order to communicate with the Windows machines using the SMB network protocol. From what I gather, without that link, Windows won't be able to "see" the Linux box at all.

[andysimmons]

Your computers will be able to "see" each other without Samba in terms of services. For instance, if you set up a webserver on your Linux box, you'll be able to load that site from any Windows box on the network with a browser; or you can set up a VNC server on any machine and use a client to control that machine from any other computer on the network, regardless of what OS is on either machine. The easiest way though to share files is Samba...I know a few ways around it but they're pretty impractical and a pain in the butt to set up if you're just going to be doing it for filesharing.