Please help me with network questions !

[ChrisOjeda]

Okay, my friend and I have been trying to setup 3 PCs to play WarCraft III from his house. We have a Dlink Router that has more than 3 ports, 3 pcs running XP, and 3 IP addresses from his Cable ISP. For some reason we can't get it to work. It will work for 2 pcs if one pc is in the router, the router uplinks to a hub, and the 2nd pc is in the hub. I know that we should be able to get all 3 pcs on the router playing WarCraft III which is why he bought all that stuff and got 3 IP addresses. We both are pc hardware experts but newbs to networks. I would really appreciate any help. Please give me the basics of what I need to do. We had the same issues with StarCraft....Thanks...Chris

 

[crazychicken]

chris, the whole point of a router is so that you DONT have to buy 3 ips from the ISP. The router acts like the 1 computer that you normally get w/ your broadband service, and then it LOCALLY gives 3 ips to the 3 computers (192.168.x.x on 255.255.255.0 addresses)

are you trying to play warcraft online or just the 3 of you? if online, i believe you'll have to have 3 separate cdkeys (if its anything like halflife). if local, it shouldn't matter, just plug all 3 comps into the router and you're good to go (again, router is not even necessary if you are staying local, just use a hub)

hope that helps

david

 

[RSMemphis]

--- concerning comment---
Yes, but a lot of IPs don't like NAT (network address translation), and they may kill your connection and/or prosecute you. Unfortunately, you can normally tell if someone uses NAT.

--- concerning original question ---
I think your problem may be that some cheap routers do not actually act as hubs/switches themselves, but just forward the packets to the gateway. The gateway should normally send it back, but it is possible that the ISP does not allow that (otherwise it would be possible to DOS yourself, so to speak)...

Try the following: connect all your PCs to the hub, and then use the hub to uplink to the router... It may just work.

Edit: Just out of curiosity.. What brand/model is your hub, what brand/model is your router?

 

[crazychicken]

RSMemphis
more and more companies are caring less and less about using a router to split their connection. however, if it was againsts policy, i was under the impression that it was impossible to tell, as the router looks exactly like a computer to the companies computers.

lmk

david

 

[RSMemphis]

Hmm, did not know that most ISPs allow this now.

You are right, a router pretty much looks like a normal computer to them, but there are a few differences:

First of all, a lot of people don't use firewalls, and then you can see the Microsoft Networking ports if you scan them. If they are not there, that could already be suspect.
Second of all, NAT works by using a lot more ports than a normal machine does, which could be deciphered statistically.

I agree with you, finding this out is hard, but it is possible. One of the last universities I was at had a "per port monthly fee", and they did run those scans to find any NAT computers. I saw one of those scripts in action. I do not know how efficient it was at finding everyone.

 

[Descartes]

First of all, a lot of people don't use firewalls, and then you can see the Microsoft Networking ports if you scan them. If they are not there, that could already be suspect.

That means nothing. Not everyone on the planet runs Windows. Even if they do, they could have disabled NetBIOS over TCP/IP which would shutdown port 137. They could disable file sharing, which should shut down 139 (or possibly 445 if you're running Win2k).

Second of all, NAT works by using a lot more ports than a normal machine does, which could be deciphered statistically.

That's how every TCP network application works. It allocates an ephemeral port when establishing a connection with a remote service and uses it to communicate until the connection is closed. NAT uses roughly the same mechanism, so the source port is in no way indicative of a computer running NAT.

There are more sophisticated techniques to discovering the device type/name/platform; IP fingerprinting. Most IP implementations have their own nuances that can allow tools to identify the type of the host sending the packets. Certain IP implementations set flags that others don't, respond to packets when they shouldn't, drop packets when they shouldn't, etc., allowing tools like queso or nmap to identify the source by comparing these nuances in a table of identified hosts.

 

[kt]

Everyone been so busy trying to argue about the different ways of discovering NAT, the real question has ben ignored. Don't you guys think it's kinda odd that he has to use a router? First of all, if he already have 3 IP addresses from the cable ISP, why does he need a router? He only need a switch or hub and connect the cable modem to the uplink port of the switch or hub. Connect the 3 PC's to the switch/or hub. Assign the IP's to each PC accordingly. I am assuming the 3 IP addresses are static.