Thoroughly confused: trying to home network

[Godfodda]

I must be thicker-skulled than I though because I just can get this right. I'm trying to network 3 systems (to start, anyway) through an old 3Com hub. I was able to link one of these with my son's over the weekend so that we could play a game (very useful, I know :)).

My machine names are TOM, SETI, and SETI2. All three machines are running ME and I've run the networking wizard on all of them. I'm trying to get this going so I can use VNC to operate the 2 SETI machines and eventually give them internet access through TOM. TOM has 2 NICs, one hooked to the hub, one hooked to the DSL modem. Both SETI machines have one NIC each hooked to the hub.

When I try to access any machine from another with My Network Places, I get an error (unable to browse network). I'm unsure of what I need to do to make this work. I'd like to get some directions on how to complete the network, and how to add more machines later. The damned Windows "help" files just aren't cutting it. Newbie? Oh yes. :p

Many thanks for any help you can offer.

[SteenkyBastage]

hey godfodda,

check to make sure each computer is on the same workgroup. also check and make sure they all have tcp-ip installed (and bound to the NIC) in the network settings area.

i believe you must also use a network client (altho i'm not sure they all have to be the same or not) on each machine and actually log in (not cancel or hit esc when the logon screen shows up). network client for me i believe is microsoft windows login, or microsoft family login. not sure, i mainly use win2k here at work and they dont have choices like that in networking.

unable to browse the network happens to me when:

1) the cable isn't plugged in right (or the cable is bad) leaving no connection to the hub/router.

2) someone has used win9x and not logged in (they hit cancel instead)

3) the tcp-ip or some protocol was not properly installed.

or

4) the drivers for the NIC were incorrect or not fully installed.

those are the 4 reasons i can recall ever having that problem. while i'm sure there are other reasons it could happen, this would give you a good starting point to start looking into.

hope this helps!

keep us posted

[Godfodda]

Thanks for the note SteenkyBastage (love that nick :D).

The Login thing was the only one that I was unsure of so I checked it, but no luck. I did discover the problem, however. I had forgotten about ZoneAlarm. It didn't like the whole idea of a LAN so I set it to minimum and everything was go from the main machine. Machine 3 was go after playing with it for a little while, and I poked around on #2 for a bit and got it up also. AND have VNC running fine, too.

Now if I can just repeat these steps in the future I might be alright. :)

[dugans]

I use ZoneAlarm too: here is a trick for use on a network-

go to the ZoneAlarm control Center (rright click in the system tray)

select the Security tab and then advanced

click on "ADD" and you get 4 choices:
Host/Site, IP Address, IP Range or Subnet.

give a name for the range (anything you want) and then give the beginning and ending IP addresses.

This adds that range of IP addresses to your Local Zone and makes networking MUCH easier.

[Godfodda]

Originally posted by rogerdugans
I use ZoneAlarm too: here is a trick for use on a network-

go to the ZoneAlarm control Center (rright click in the system tray)

select the Security tab and then advanced

click on "ADD" and you get 4 choices:
Host/Site, IP Address, IP Range or Subnet.

give a name for the range (anything you want) and then give the beginning and ending IP addresses.

This adds that range of IP addresses to your Local Zone and makes networking MUCH easier.

Can you tell me how to assign the IP addies? I pushed my luck last night after I got it working by trying to get ICS to work and now I'm all screwed again. The two SETI machines see each other, but not the main one (TOM). The main one can browse itself but can't see the others. I've tried everything I could figure out and still can't make them work together again. Maybe assigning IPs would help?

[Godfodda]

Many thanks to roger for his help via PM. Set up static IP on the main machine's 2nd NIC and entered the info into ZA. It's working again. I even broke it and fixed right after just to make sure. :D

A few questions:

+Do I need to assign IPs to the other 2 machines? (I did, but don't know if it's necessary.)

+Are the assigned addresses supposed to be of a certain domain? (I used 192.168.1.* as I had seen this offered in an earlier post regarding home network addressing.)

+Am I at any greater security risk now than before? And if I use ICS (or something similar) will I encounter greater risk?

Thanks again roger and everyone.

[Twyst]

I don't know if this applies to your setup or not, but if TOM isn't setup as a firewall your ISP is gonna charge you extra for each extra computer connected since they'll issue you new IPs for each of the new computers that are connected. If you do have a firewall then your security and connection problems should be limited.

[Godfodda]

Originally posted by Twyst
I don't know if this applies to your setup or not, but if TOM isn't setup as a firewall your ISP is gonna charge you extra for each extra computer connected since they'll issue you new IPs for each of the new computers that are connected. If you do have a firewall then your security and connection problems should be limited.

Thanks for the note. TOM is set up with ZoneAlarm and the other machines would be connecting through it.