Sygate Office Network NAT software inconsistent. Please help!!

[Methusela]

Hey, folks, what's going on?

Here's my problem in a nutshell. I just built a new pc based on the Asus A7N8X Dlx mobo, which has two onboard nics. They work great in Windows XP, and I love the board.

I originally got this board because I wanted this pc to temporarily act as a router/firewall for my local network to access the internet via my cable modem. I downloaded the evaluation copy of Sygate's Office Network 4.02 build 803. This was recommended by some networking friends to serve as a software router during the time I'm unable to purchase a hardware router/nat solution (till next paycheck).

Everything works fine on initial setup, and all computers on the network are able to connect to the internet with all programs and on all protocols. The problem I'm having is that after an unspecified amount of time, the networked pc's stop having access to the internet. At first, their connection slows, then is just gone altogether. Sometimes it takes only minutes, sometimes hours for this to happen. The main pc, the router, continuously has internet connection no matter what. The Sygate software must be closed and restarted to allow networked pc's to regain access to the internet.

I've emailed Sygate about this, and they said that in no way is their evaluation software crippled, other than it has a 30 day usage limit. So, it's not the software. I've gone through the setup and controls and manually added all network IPs to Sygate's "white list" for all tcp and udp ports. I've configured it to drop a connection after the maximum allowable time limit of no network activity (1439 minutes) just in case this was causing problems. I have basically tweaked Sygate's nat server to the hilt in an attempt to remedy this problem, but to no avail.

Please note that I am using Windows XP Pro SP1 on all machines, the latest Nforce 2 Asus-specific drivers on the box serving as the router, and nothing is overclocked. Also note that from the networked pc's, I'm able to ping both network card IPs on the router machine, but am unable to go past the router to any internet ip or domain when the Sygate problem occurs. From the router box, I'm also able to access the other machines on the network with no problems when the Sygate problem shows up.

Anyone know what might be the problem?? I tried getting WinXP ICS installed on this router machine, but for some reason it always gave me "an unspecified error has occured. please re-run this ICS wizard or configure your network manually" message on the final screen of the ICS setup wizard. That was after a fresh install of WinXP and SP1.

If you need additional info about my setup, please ask. Also, if you don't have a conclusion about the problem, could you recommend some other free or shareware software nat/router software that in your experience DOES work?

TIA,

Methusela

 

[lobadobadingdong]

Have you tried simply bridging the two nics and using the built in firewall in XP(not exactly top of the line but somewhat adiquate) and using an ICS setup? At the very least you can use this as a test to make sure it's the Sygate software and not a windows or hardware issue.
The reason is it sounds very much like the Sygate NAT software's IP control stack is getting fubared everytime, after an intermittent error in it's stack database, I've seen Artisoft's nat and ics systems do the exact same thing. Thank god for XP's ICS! something that Microsoft finally got right.

 

[Methusela]

Originally posted by: Methusela

Anyone know what might be the problem?? I tried getting WinXP ICS installed on this router machine, but for some reason it always gave me "an unspecified error has occured. please re-run this ICS wizard or configure your network manually" message on the final screen of the ICS setup wizard. That was after a fresh install of WinXP and SP1.

Thank you, lobadobadingdong, I did try ICS. I had never set it up before, and thought maybe it just didn't work well when trying to get it installed. Do you happen to know of any decent guides on how to set it up properly, including what services it requires? I've tried changing a lot of services around and am not exactly sure what's what anymore. Call me a noob .

Thanks much,

Methusela

 

[lobadobadingdong]

I haven't found any good guides, but I can get you started right here.

the xp box (inbound nic) will have to be set up as the internet provider requires, most likely strait dhcp.
the xp box (outbound nic) that will be shareing the internet pipe must have an ip address of 192.168.1.1(required by microsofts implementation of ics)
subnet 255.255.255.0
and the connection should be shared and firewalled. (the two nics need to also be bridged if you haven't figured that out already)

on the "client" boxes they should have an ip address of 192.168.1.xxx (where xxx is a number between 2-253 and must be unique to each box) subnet 255.255.255.0 gateway of 192.168.1.1 and dns server lookup to 192.168.1.1

If the firewalled box is running good av software you shouldn't have to many problems accross you lan as it should stop malicious activity on the inbound port, before forwarding the packets to the "client" boxes

 

[Methusela]

Well, thanks for the assistance but I'm not going to setup ICS. I think I have found the true cause of the problem: the onboard 3com nic.

This link to the nForcersHQ forum seems to state that a good many people have been having similar problems.

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6061

If asus' sites weren't frequently down, I'd get the udpated driver and see if that helped. 3com's website has no information about this onboard nic based on Device Manager's id of the 3com nic, so I can't download anything from there.

Oh well, I'll let you know.

Thanks anyways!

Methusela