LAN Party Problems

[Mr_Flibbles]

I'm angry! My buds and I hauled our computers (six) to a basement with the intention of getting some mad multiplayer madness in, but we ended up sitting on our hands lots and playing little.

We had a 4-port hub, a 4-port router, and plenty of cables. Two XP computers, two 98, and one ME. When the two XP were on the router togther, they recognized eachother. Otherwise, nothing recognized anything else, and we were all quite angry. Do we have to change all of our network settings (many of us have them specially set for our home networks and would rather not have to change 'em). Or does going from a hub to a router not work? Or is Microsoft being Microsoft and making incompatible OSs?

Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[sturm]

can u ping the computers that arent showing on the network?
I had problems networking an xp with an me computer directly with a crossover cable- no hub or router. had ro run network wizard on the xp, make network disk and then run it on the me computer. as a last resort u might try deleteing all the tcp/ip protocols on the 98/me computers and then running the network disk. worked for me. just make sure u have a windows 98/me disk incase it needs something off it. good luck

 

[sturm]

afterthought. do all the nics have different ip addresses? if not change the last digit in increments for each computer.

 

[Mr_Flibbles]

I'll try deleting the protocals next time. Somebody did in fact try running an XP-made diagnostics disk on the other computers, but they still wouldn't connect.

We also tried manually setting the IP addresses for each of the computers: 192.168.1.100, ...101, ...102 etc, but to no effect. The two computers running off of USB NIC adapters seemed to give us the most problems, though, as they often didn't correctly report the IP addresses we had set (winipcfg showed autoconfiguration addresses).

Is it possible that DHCP in the router is screwing our attempts to manually set the IPs? Is it possible to turn this off in the router (it's turned off on all the computers)? And is it not good practice to link a router and a hub?

Thanks for your help.

 

[sturm]

I dont think going from hub to router is correct. I just installed a linksys router at my friends house and it set up fine. his is XP mine is ME. try this: Cable modem (if u have one) connected to the wan port, computer 1 in port 4, computer 2 in port 3, computer 3 in port 2, run the hub off the uplink port: DONT USE PORT 1 WHEN USING THE UPLINK. connect the other 3 computers off the hub. u may have to run the setup disk on all computers to get them to connect which means your friends will need to reset theirs at home. May also make sure under the tcp/ip properties in: <control panel><network> that "Obtain ip address atuomatically" is checked and also that their are no installed gateways under the gateway tab.
Hope this will help some.

 

[slickstaa]

Ok, first of all, yes you are probably going to have to change your network settings. Your router should have a built in DHCP server, meaning it will automatically assign ip addresses. So, for starters set all your computers to automatically obtain an ip address. (Of course make sure you have the tcp-ip protocol installed) Plugging the hub into one of the router ports on Uplink mode should allow it to work.

Okay, once you have all that done... in win9x go to the run menu and type <font color=blue> winipcfg </font color=blue>. in xp/2k, get to a command prompt and then type <font color=blue> ipconfig /all </font color=blue>.

You should all be on the same subnet, gateway, dns, etc. Your ips will most likely be something like 192.168.0.xxx.

You may want to enable file sharing on all of your computers. to access another persons computer without going through the network neighborhood garbage just go to run and type \\computer where computer is the name of the system you are accesing or \\[ip address]. If you can access each other with that, you should be able to play games just fine.



Once you think you have everything hooked up correctly and everyone on auto-assig

<font color=blue> If it ain't broke, don't fix it...tweak it.</font color=blue>

 

[phr0ze]

Quote: "Cable modem (if u have one) connected to the wan port, computer 1 in port 4, computer 2 in port 3, computer 3 in port 2, run the hub off the uplink port: DONT USE PORT 1 WHEN USING THE UPLINK. "

This may work but the correct way is to plug the uplink port of the HUB into port 1 of the router. (Or any other port)

I also recommend using DHCP on the machines. It also helps to give everyone the same workgroup name. Users with XP can setup Alternate network settings without messing with thier primary. It should be a tab in the TCP/IP settings.

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phr0Ze

 

[sturm]

then the manual for the linksys router is wrong because thats what it said to do, "dont use port 1 when using the uplink port."
<A HREF="http://www.linksys.com/support/support.asp?spid=1 " target="_new">http://www.linksys.com/support/support.asp?spid=1 </A>
says,"Uplinking to other Hubs or Switches If you are uplinking to another hub or switch you can use the uplink port on the back of the router with a straight through cable. Port 1 on the router may not be used if the uplink port is used and visa versa. Maximum uplink distance to a switch or a 10Mbps hub is 100 meters (328 feet)."

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by sturm on 01/04/03 12:09 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[jihiggs]

port one and the uplink port are the same port, just the uplink has a crossed pinout.

my computer is so fast, it completes an endless loop in less than 4 seconds!

 

[phr0ze]

I know all this. I'm not suggesting you use both ports at the same time. What I'm saying is you UPLINK the hub to port 1 of the router. not the other way around. Linksys is accurate if you are UPLINKING the router to another hub or switch then use the uplink port. But you are not doing that. You are uplinking a hub to the router. See what I'm saying? What happens if you wanted to plug in two hubs? you couldn't. (I guess you can chain them but that would really slow the network.)

Good luck

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phr0Ze

It may say I'm a NOOB but I've been hiding in the shadows @ THG since 97. <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phr0ze on 01/08/03 09:16 AM.</EM></FONT></P>