Help setting up my first home network

[solleyman]

OK. I've got an XP box that I use daily and an old Win98 box that has been collecting dust. I decided that I'd like to netowork them to use the old 98 box for media storage, etc.

I have cable internet (Knology). The 98 box doesn't necessarily have to have access to the internet...I really don't care if it does or doesn't.

I have a Linksys EZXS55W 5 Port 10/100 Switch that I got from a buddy.

I have created the network setup disk in XP and run it on the 98 box.

I was set up like this last night: cable connector in wall to cable to cable modem to CAT5 to "uplink" port on switch, CAT5 from ports 1 & 2 on switch to NICs on each box.

This didn't work. Neither box could see each other, nor the internet.

XP said internet (or was it network....) connection wasn't working because the network didn't assign an IP address, or something like that.

I obviously don't know too much about what I'm doing here, so any help from you pro's would be aprreciated.

Thanks.

- Sol

EDIT: ****UPDATE**** Double checked that I had all of the cables in the right spot, and I didn't. Now the XP box has internet (thru the switch and the cable modem), but the 98 box doesn't and neither box can see the other.

 

[Somniferum]

Make sure both machines are members of the same Windows "workgroup". Since you are using an old-style hub instead of a router, you will probably need to manually assign an IP address to each machine. IP addresses in the following format are reserved for LANs so you can use them internally (they don't exist on the internet):

192.168.1.1
192.168.1.2
192.168.x.x .......

Set the Default Gateway on both to 255.255.255.0. This is all done in the network properties.

Also, make sure you haven't killed any services that might be necessary.

 

[solleyman]

OK. Thanks for helping...

Both machines are in the same WG and when I mannually assigned the suggested IP address....they talked! BUT, neither box could hit the net....I had to go back in and let the XP box get an IP address assigning automatically to post this message.

Again, I don't care if the 98 box can hit the net, but the XP box has to....

 

[Somniferum]

It sounds like your switch doesn't support NAT (network address translation), which complicates things.

If you have another LAN card laying around, you could install 2 LAN cards in your XP box ... plug one into the switch for the local network, the other into the cable modem. In that case your XP box would actually have two IP addresses -- one for the LAN, assigned manually, and one for the Internet, assigned automatically. Then you could turn on Internet Connection Sharing on the XP box and it would act like a NAT for the 98 box. That's what I had to do before I bought a broadband router.