Complicated network setup/sharing (dual adapters, Mac & PC)

Subw00er

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May 4, 2010
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I've been struggling with this for a while, hopefully someone can shed some light.

The setup:
I have three computers; two macs and a pc. The macs have two available ethernet ports, and and on the pc I have added a USB network adapter to get an extra ethernet jack. The macs are wirelessly connected to a normal wireless network router. The pc is ethernet-connected to a work environment using a domain.

The goal:
I would like to have a shared folder on mac #1 that the other machines can share between (sans password, if possible).

Progress so far:
I have tried adding a gigabit switch and assigning static IPs and I had limited success. I was able to see the other computers but not really share between them. The closest I got to sharing was using FTP between the machines. I went out and bought a dlink gaming gigabit router and tried to use it thinking that the dhcp or proper network setup would assist somehow. So far, I'm not having any luck. I thought about just using a router as a bridge (airport extreme for example) but it occurred to me that I would then be sharing my work network with my other network, and for security reasons I am not permitted to do this.

The other whole side of this is actually setting up each machine such that its shared properly. I believe I have this correct, but its all a bit of a mystery!
 

sk1939

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Rember that Macs and Windows can't natively talk to each other for file sharing. On the Mac you have to make sure that SMB is enabled, and that on Windows you can file share. Once you enable SMB on a Mac, you then can go and use connect to and type smb://<ip add> and that will add effectively what is a Mac equivalanet to a mapped network drive.
 

Brian_tii

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Feb 9, 2010
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I'm assuming you've defined a different network IP address ranges for each of these networks, correct? IE... if work wireless network is 192.168.1.x, you can't have that on the wired network. Also have you disabled the firewall on both the Macs and the PC's? Mac should be System Preferences -> Security; Windows will probably be under firewall in the control panel.