[Cardinal]

Hi.

I hope the Subject title was not rude in any way.

I need networking help and as far as this forum goes, Clutch is (in my opinion) one of the more knowledgeable chaps in regards to networking.

Ok, Here is my problem.

I have a simple twin pc LAN set up at home. My pc, with two NIC's is connected to the internet with a cable modem attached to one NIC. The other NIC is attached to a single crossover CAT-5 cable that runs to the other pc.


My Computer (THE GATEWAY)
D-Link 550TX 100 mbs NIC -------------> Cable Modem.
Netgear FA311 100 mbs NIC ------------> Connected to (THE WORKSTATION)


Other Computer. (THE WORKSTATION)
SMC 1211TX 100 mbs NIC ---------------> Connected to (THE GATEWAY)



There is NO hub. It is a simple peer to peer network. It used to work with my old cards. Both pc's used to have Realtek 8029 10mbs NIC's in them instead of the 100mbs adapters they have now.

It did work fine, the cable is a crossover, there is no need for a hub in this situation. Ok, so tonight I come home with a new NIC and decide to upgrade the LAN speed to 100mbs by swapping the realteks. Now it does not work. This is how the pc's are configured.

My Computer.
D-Link NIC - Receive IP address automatically from my ISP's DHCP.
Netgear NIC - Is Assigned an IP. 192.168.0.1

Other Computer.
SMC NIC - Is Assigned an IP. 192.168.0.2


The other computer {above) has my IP (192.168.0.1)installed in the network properties as a Default Gateway. The primary DNS address the same. Under the WINS tab, ENABLE NETBIOS OVER TCP/IP is ticked (the default).

The Worgroup name is the SAME for both pc's.

I have even ran the Network ID wizard on both pcs, and rebooted.


So that's it.

What have I done wrong? Could you please help me through this? I just can not work it out.

If there is anything else you need to know, or if anyone needs to know just ask, I'll post the details straight away.

Thanks in advance, I really am at my wits end.





Regards,

Cardinal.

[kgeissler]

From what it sounds like, your computer (the one connected to the cable modem) should have an IP of 192.168.0.1. The other computer (the one with the just the crossover) should be 192.168.0.2. The DNS and gateway for the other computer should be 192.168.0.1.

If that is not how it is setup, you might want to fully remove all network cards and TCP/IP from device manager and re-add them.

If the setup above is correct, can you ping back and forth between the 2 machines?

[clutch]

Okey dokey, what part of it is not working? Can you ping from the workstation to the LAN-side NIC of the gateway? Can you ping to the Internet-side NIC? Is it a problem where you simply cannot resolve names to IP addresses (it can't find any address you put in the address bar and comes up with DNS errors).

[Cardinal]

Thanks for replying so quickly guys

Ok, neither computers can ping eachother. There seems to be no connection at all.

On my side, (THE GATEWAY) I can ping any web site fine, my cable connection is running normally. But I can not ping the other pc's IP (i.e, 192.168.0.2).

So it's not a matter of resolving host names.

To answer Kgessler's question, The gateway's IP (i.e 192.168.0.1)has been added to the Default Gateway and the DNS settings of the (WORKSTATIONS) network properties settings.

That was done before, and alas, still no go.

Any further ideas?

[kgeissler]

This may sound dumb, but do you have a link light on the crossover cable? Maybe the cable got shorted or something with the new card. Just a thought.

[clutch]

It does sound like it could be a bad cable. In addition, check your NICs and see if the pins look like they are making good contact. I had that happen with a couple of D-Links once, where they were showing a "good" connection, but were actually making poor contact with the pins on the cable.

[FrogMaster]

Does the set up works at 10Mbps?
You may want to try to change the advanced properties of your Nic cards.
First, try 10Mbps half duplex, then 10Mbps full duplex, then 100Mbps half and then 100Mbps full duplex.
You will see when the link stalls. One hundred Mbps can be tricky to get with cheapo nics and cable. Worth trying anyway.

[Cardinal]

I didn't try setting the speed of the cards to 10mb. I tried autosense, and then 100mb half duplex. I guess autosense would not work without a hub would it? In the end frustration led me to taking out the card and putting back the old Realtek jobs and now the network is running fine. Why is that? Almost straight away, as soon as I put the 10mb cards back in they found each other.

I have decided I do not like w2k's client to client networking at all.
It has been such a fuking pain all this. I am almost going bald.

In the past with my system setup as the gateway running w2k, and the other pc using Windows 9x we had no problems. File sharing has proven to be a nightmare. I boot up, the connection to the other computer is detected and in order for me to gain file access I must enter a password. So that's two passwords I have to enter in the space of a minute. One to log on, One to gain file access on the other pc. Is there a work around for this? I just dislike the way w2k has setup simple networking. I have been win 2k loyal ever since I first tried it, and after running windows XP for a while, I am really seeing the flaws in win 2k.

Anyway, enough ranting. Frog man said that 100 mbs might not be obtainable with cheap network cards and/or cheap cable. Ok, well one of the cards, the Netgear (now thrown in a box somewhere) cost me $69 and with Netgear's reputation I would of thought this card was at least able to maintain 100mb/s. As for the SMC, well everyone knows they are bargain bacement material. I don't know, I guess I have no choice but to endure a 10meg connection with poor Realtek (although reliable) NIC's. Until I purchase a hub that is. Hubs are so expensive here. I am just left with a bad taste in my mouth after this experience. Oh, also, I didn't know there was high quality and low quality CAT5 cable.

Anyway, Thanks so much guys for responding so to my post.

[Cardinal]

Eh, I forgot my question :p

[clutch]

Autosense does work on a crossover cable, so you should be fine there. One thing that you could try it using just the Netgear card on one PC and the other PC would still have the Realtek card in it. The Netgear will drop to 10Mb auto-magically, so you would be fine in that sense.

As for peer-to-peer networking with Win2K, the easiest way to do it is have one PC join the other PC's domain. When you setup Win2K for the first time, it will create a domain (or workgroup, it's been a long time since I haven't had to join an external domain :)) with its own user account structure. If the other PC is using Win98, simply go into network properties>client for MS networks and set it to join an NT domain. At that point, use the domain name of the Win2K box (such as "MyW2KBox" or whatever the name of the PC was during setup) and enter it. It will ask for admin credentials of that domain, so at that point you enter them. Once you do that, all you have to do in Win98 is logon with a username and password from the W2K box and from then on you wont need to repeatedly enter user info for file shares, or enable that dipsh*t guest account.

If you have any issues with this, let me know.

[Uykucu]

Well for 1
Yes you can not under any circumstance reach 100Mb/ps on a crossover (It has to do with FDuplex/Hduplex),
And for a 100 mbps you need properly shielded Cat5 350mhz capable cable, which is verry expensive for home networking.

And in my opinion Netgear is crap!!!
If you paid $69 you can get a decent Intel or 3Com card with paying about $40 more. In fact you will get a verry decent one.

And 100 Mbps is not gonna make any difference unless you hobby is moving 10GB files between you computers hourly! What a sad life that would have been

[Cardinal]

Thanks again for the replies.

I need more help but I'm not sure if I should open a new thread.

actually, I will hehe.

:: Off topic, I was rejected for another job yesterday. The 20th rejection in about 3 months. I'm being forced out of the normal circle most people live in. (85% of them according to statistics in Australia) Unemployed, unhappy and tought by the media to blame myself. The government refuses to admit that Australia will always have a population of around 4.1 million permanently unemployed. As we all get bored, and frustrated problems begin to occur. This computer is my little porthole to a world full of people where we are all equal. The net. My only source of communication most days. Tragic.