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Home Networking Problems/Questions...Help Appreciated

T

tjmaxwell

Golden Member
Hello,

Recently, I switched from Sprint Broadband service to AT&T (now Comcast) cable modem service. I have a standard four port hub connecting two PCs to share Internet access. My PC has Windows XP Pro, and the other computer has Windows 98 (First edition, I believe). The internet works fine on both machines, but I can't seem to get file sharing to work. I've run the home networking wizard on my PC, then used my Windows XP CD to install the functionality on the other PC. This worked fine back when I had Sprint Broadband, but since switching to cable, it won't work. I can't see the other computer on my machine, and the other computer can't see me. When I go into My Network Places and click "View Workgroup Computers," it pauses for a long time and then says "MSHOME is not accessible. You may not have permission, contact the administrator." Well, I am the administrator. I've tried following tutorials and doing such things as disabling simple file sharing, but nothing works. I've also made sure to check simple things like having folders shared, etc. Any help would be appreciated.

On a similar note, I'm thinking of purchasing a router so my connection is a little more secure than the standard Windows XP firewall. I'm looking into a wireless router simply so if the computers are moved far apart, I don't need to string CAT-5 cable everywhere. I have standard 10/100 NIC cards in both PCs. Is there anything else I need for wireless connectivity to work? Also, when it comes to the router, I have some concerns about gaming and the like. I used to use Norton Personal Firewall, but got fet up with all the alerts popping up all the time. Will I have to go through a huge hassle with the router in order for it to allow me to play online games? Any insight on this would be helpful. Thanks a lot!
 
I assume that you're paying for 2 IP addresses with your cable service, and that with Sprint you also had 2 IP addresses? What's likely happening is your two computers are receiving IP addresses that are in a different network (like one has 24.123.5.2 and the other has 24.128.9.16, with subnets of 255.255.0.0). WindowsXP's version of file sharing uses IP information as part of the sharing system, while previous versions didn't. With Sprint you probably had two IPs that were in the same network, so they could communicate directly, but with Comcast your machines can't "see" each other directly due to being in different networks. File sharing information can't be routed, and if it could, it would mean going out over your cable line then back in the cable line to the other computer.

You can install the NetBEUI protocol from the XP CD, and Win98 can have it installed as well, and this will allow sharing. NetBEUI uses only local broadcasted IDs, not IP, so your machines would basically be using one protocol for file sharing, and another for your normal Internet traffic.

Wireless would be okay for your uses, but if you do a lot of file sharing between the computers then wired is the way to go. If you want to go wireless, you obviously would need to buy either USB wireless adapters, or PCI adapters that use a PCMCIA wireless card.

The router shouldn't cause problems with MOST games, however there are some that are an issue. Most current games allow multiple connections from the same IP address, because they redirect the ports (using NAT as all home routers do means that a certain port can only be open by one machine at a time). Some games require that you use port forwarding to be able to play the game at all, and in those cases, since a port can only be forwarded to one of your internal machines at a time, only one computer can play that game at a time. Also, many older games simply don't allow more than one connection from a single IP because they always use the same port and keep it open, so the second machine can't connect without disrupting the first one (some may work if both computers aren't playing on the same server/host).

For the most part, using a router is a good thing.
 
Tjmaxwell, I'm having a silimar problem.

In my case, I inserted an SMC7004 router between my old machine (dual boot W2K Pro and ME) and my cable modem (AT&T) and then added a new machine (running XP) to the router. The internet connection for both machines is working great. Now I want to copy some files from my old machine to my new machine, but I can't get them to really see each other. I've run the XP network setup on the new machine. I also made the floppy disk to run on the old machine to set it up. It refused to run under W2K Pro (telling me it was not one of the operating systems it was designed for). It did run under Windows ME, but I now get two scripting errors (a shock to me) when I open Network Neighborhood.

Evermore, I'm assuming my problem isn't related to IP addresses since these are being dynamically assigned by the router (as I understand it). I read somewhere that the W2K machine should recognize that the XP box is the "boss" for file sharing across the network. Is this even close to correct?

Frankly, I'm ready to start burning files onto a CD to do what I need for now, but I would like to get these two machines sharing files eventually. Any help would be appreciated.

I'd also be interested in learning how safe it is to allow file and printer sharing behind a stateful firewall (with default setting) like the SMC7004.

Thanks!
 
Windows Networking is a peer-to-peer network, there is no "boss". Each computer is assigned an identification based on the computer name, which it broadcasts over the LAN at boot to let other machines know it is available as a server (which is how it shares files). In previous versions of Windows, NetBIOS over NetBeui was used for the identification information and file transfers, but in XP, NetBIOS runs on TCP/IP to simplify things. The NetBIOS name is the identification.

When a computer needs to connect and send or receive data from another computer, it has to look and see if it knows the existance of the computer name that you saw on Network Neighborhood, then see what the IP address is. If your machine doesn't know, then that means you couldn't have seen the name in Network Neighborhood. After it finds the IP, it begins to set up the connection between machines and transfers the data. The data travels over TCP/IP.

It does sound likt this may be firewalling issues in some part.
 

Yikes!

I hadn't considered that possibility. That's exactly what it turned out to be. My new installation of Norton Internet Security was blocking traffic from the old machine. I configured it to trust the range of IP addresses used by the SMC7400 and now it works just as it should.

I'm sure I'd have "wandered through the network desert" for many more hours if you hadn't led me in the right direction. All praise to Lord Evermore!

Thanks!
 
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