Networking to another PC through router.

[brucek]

I have a small LAN, and ADSL router to the internet. When I first constructed this years ago, I joined all the nodes through a simple hub. I have now replaced the hub with a wireless router that includes my PCs still on ethernet cable, and also a laptop and a wireless printer on the radio connection. It generally works well.

I want to be able to access a file on another computer on my LAN (actually it's a data file for Quicken), so that I and other PC users can independently make transactions to the file via the application which is installed on all computers. Only one computer has the data file, and it's on this one that I wish to write to the file from another PC.

I had this working OK until recently. I now get an error message, something like "The location specified in target.lnk is not available". I've tried temporarily disabling the XP SP2 firewall in the computer that I'm attempting to write to. The location appears in the "File Open" menu as "\\Computer Name\Folder\File name" (without quotes). The router assigns IP addresses through DHCP, and I don't know if the IP assignment changes so that the computer name is no longer mapped to the IP.

I don't operate servers, so this is a straight peer-to-peer network. Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm trying to do? I'm obviously not an expert at networking, so any help at all would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Bruce.

 

[LVDAX]

first off to make your life easier try setting the computer with the file one it to a static IP address. If you need help with that let us know. Then try to remap the file on the other computers by the ip address. (i.e. \\192.168.2.1\docs\file.qbw)
See if that works.
Best of luck

 

[brucek]

Thanks lvdax,

For some reason the router doesn't see the PC when it has a static address, only when it assigns addresses. Maybe I need to explore this further, I just assumed it was the way that routers and PC's worked. ?? I used to have static IP's on all PC's with the old hub, and actually prefer my network set up that way.

Thanks- Bruce.

 

[robmurphy]

If you want to keep the same IP addresses you can either allocate them staticaly, or reserve IP addresses on your wireless router.

The reservations have the advantage that if the DNS or other data setup by DHCP changes then a simple release/renew, or restart will cure it. I use this on the home network that connects to my wireless routers, and have seen the IP address for the DNS server change. The DNS server address is provided by the ISP's equipment.

To setup a reservation you will need the MAC address of network connection you want to setup a reservation for. You can findout what the MAC address on a computer is by opening a cmd widow and entering "ipconfig /all". If you look around on the menus on your router you should find the one needed for setting up reservations.

Once you have done that map the file using the IP address as suggested by lvdax.

Rob Murphy