Home Network Problems (Newbie Questions)

Hi All,

I am a real newbie in setting up routers, this is my first router set up for a small business that I run myself. I have A Cisco 851 router, a printer and two PC's both running Windows XP SP2 (fully updated).

My WAN port on my router is contected to my broadband modem (my PC's share 1 internet connection). My printer and PC's are connected to the LAN ports on the router (all Ethernet). Everything is connected using Cat 5 patch cables. I can access the internet from either PC with no problems whatsoever, I can also print from either PC to the printer which is also connected to the router (and not directly to a PC). However, I can not get my PC's to recognise each other to perform file sharing.

I have a VLAN set up on the router (auto-configured by SDM). Windows firewall is turned off (but Norton is still enabled). I have TCP/IP installed on both machines, I have both machines in the same Workgroup with differenet "Machine Names" and "Descriptions". I have also set up a "network share" folder inside the regular windows share folder that you see when you click "my computer" ("shared documents" and "documents"), I have also tried sharing the whole C drive. In my network places I can see my "workgroup", but when I try to open it/connect no computer names are listed and I get an error message:

"Workgroup is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The list of servers for this workgroup is currently unavailable."

However I am presently running an administrator account on both machines to get them set up. Do I have to set permissions for something else? As far as I am aware I don't run a server either, so what "list of servers" should I have?

I can ping my router (which has an address I assigned to it) and get a positive response, and I can ping my printer and get a positive response, but if I try to ping either of the PC's I get a "request timed out" response. I can ping each machine locally (if that is the correct term) i.e ping 127.0.0.1, but if I try to ping the address the VLAN has assigned to the PC (or the other PC on my LAN) that is when I get a "request timed out message". I can actually ping my real IP address also (the address assigned to me by my ISP).

I am a real beginner in all this so I was wondering if anyone has some pointers here (would be much appreciated), is there something I am missing? All I want to do is be able to do is share files between two PC's on the same LAN, enabling them both to connect to the internet, but not allowing machines on the internet to "file share" with either of the PC's or have any other kind of access to the PC's on my LAN.

Additional Details.

Network Connections shows the address assigned by the router's VLAN, not my real IP address for each of my PC's. So for instance if I gave my router the address of 74.74.74.1, my PC's & printers IP's are 74.74.74.2,

74.74.74.3, & 74.74.74.4. The subnet mask is 255.255.255.0, and I use DHCP to get an IP address from my ISP, but usually 99.9% of the time my IP address appears to be the same. IPv6 is enabled.

Additional Questions:

Does the IP address of my router have to be a special address assigned to me by my ISP or can I chose "any" address?

Should I have to perform additional configurations on the router to enable computers on the same LAN to use file sharing? If so what are they?

------- Thanks in advance CB.

Reply to
news.ntlworld.com
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news.ntlworld.com cried out

try this click start then my computer right click on "Shared Documents" Select "Sharing And Security" You should see a window pop up with two boxes inside. They will either have text, or checkboxes depending on if file sharing is enabled or not. You may have to click a blue link in the text to enable file sharing. I do not remember exactly what it says, and have no way of checking as all of my machines have file sharing enabled, but I think it says somthing to the effect of I understand the risks, enable file sharing. Once filesharing is enabled the second box allows you to share that individual file folder on the network and allows you to set the permissions and name for that folder on the network. You can also share entire drives using this same process. Note: sharing the entire c: drive is not recomended as a matter of fact windows will let you share the entire drive but will not let certain folders be viewed on the network in my experience ie. program files and windows

Reply to
Rosco

Thanks for your efforts to help. I have file sharing enabled on both computers, the "shared documents" folder is currently shared on both computers, i.e I haven't disabled file sharing, both folders (one on each machine) are available as "network shares" and "network users can change my files".

------- Regards, CB

Reply to
Cerebral Believer

Do you have the XP firewall enabled?

If so termporarily disable and try ping test

Reply to
Merv

Merv, XP firewall is disabled completly from the control panel folder, and "Windows Firewall".

Reply to
Cerebral Believer

using ipconfig /all at the command prompt determine the MAC address of each PC's Ethernet adapter.

rom one PC ping the other.

Check each PC's ARP cache uisng command arp-a to see if ARP resolution between the two PC has occurred. Without ARP resultion, there will be no ping response

Reply to
Merv

Merv,

I ran the "ipconfic/all" command and I tried to ping the "physical" address of each PC (is this the MAC address?). I received the message "Ping request could not find host"

On the arp -a command, well at first it didn't work at all, then it produced a reading for my printer IP address. I then pinged the PC's again, then the arp -a command produced a reading of IP addresses for all the devices (from both computers). The problem with this is the readings are not constant, sometimes the readings will only show for 1 device instead of 3 or 4, readings only tend to show for a PC after it has been pinged, and pinging either of the PC's still produces a "request timed out message".

Regards, CB.

Reply to
Cerebral Believer

do you have a spare hub or switch you can connect the pcs to that way you can rule out the router being the problem? also, do you have any other firewall programs like norton internet securiy or mcafee personal firewall ??

Reply to
Larry Jones

You cannot ping the physical MAC address. The MAC address identifies each device on an Ethernet LAN.

Before an IP packet can be sent, the sender must obtain the MAC address for the destination IP address. It does this using the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). It is It then uses the MAC address obtained to finish formatting the Ethernet frame before it puts it out on the "wire".

Thus it isimportant in troubleshooting LAN connectivity issues to understand the role that the ARP protocol plays.

When you issue a ping command, your PC will ARP for the destination IP address and when it gets an ARP reply it will cache this information. This is the info you see with the arp -a command. While a firewall may block ICMP packet (pings) they do not usually block ARP, so it is a good check to perform if you are having IP connectivity issues and pings are failing.

Try downling IP Address Wizard and scanning your home network from one of your PCs to see what you can reach.

Reply to
Merv

You cannot ping the physical MAC address. The MAC address identifies each device on an Ethernet LAN.

Before an IP packet can be sent, the sender must obtain the MAC address for the destination IP address. It does this using the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). It is It then uses the MAC address obtained to finish formatting the Ethernet frame before it puts it out on the "wire".

Thus it isimportant in troubleshooting LAN connectivity issues to understand the role that the ARP protocol plays.

When you issue a ping command, your PC will ARP for the destination IP address and when it gets an ARP reply it will cache this information. This is the info you see with the arp -a command. While a firewall may block ICMP packet (pings) they do not usually block ARP, so it is a good check to perform if you are having IP connectivity issues and pings are failing.

Try downling IP Address Wizard and scanning your home network from one of your PCs to see what you can reach.

Reply to
Merv

Here is the URL for IP Address Wizard:

formatting link

Reply to
Merv

Merv,

Thanks for the advice on this, I downloaded the program and checked out my configuration. I began to be able to see my other computers listed after running the arp -a command (having previously entered a static address using arp "-s (ip address)xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (physical address)xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx").

It turns out after all my confusion that disabling Norton Personal Firewall did the trick, file sharing was available straight away after I restarted the computers and ping & arp requests worked as expected. I turned the firewalls on and simply created a rule for each machine to permit communications with the other. I had no idea the firewall would prevent file sharing. Seems after all the fuss the answer was so simple? Thanks for putting up with a newbie.

Regards, CB.

Reply to
Cerebral Believer

Windows file sharing uses NETBIOS over TCP/IP.

If TCP/IP is blocked by a firewall, then file sharing will not function as you have discovered.

Reply to
Merv

Have you set up identical user accounts on both PC? I couldn't get file sharing between two WinXP Pro machines to work until I did that.

Reply to
CWatters

Thanks, but the problem has been resolved now.

------- Regards, CB.

Reply to
Cerebral Believer

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