Internet conn sharing in heterogenous lan

[tdean]

i have a home lan consisting of 7 computers, 3 running win98se, 1 win me, 1 win2k, 1 win 2k server and 1 nt server. only one (a 98 machine with aol dial up grrrrrr) is connected to the internet. this week i am getting at&t broadband. i have 4 questions....
1)is there a difference between at&t world net and at&t roadrunner? i read several months back tha roadrunner was rated the best..... anyone????
2)which computer would you connect the cable modem to... one of my 98 machines is conciderably faster in everyway than the other systems. (its my gaming system)
3)is it possible to do internet connection sharing with all these os's? would i have to create a vpn on the nt machine?
4)would my lan still function or would the ip blocks all be thrown off by the connection sharing?
i thank the great gods of the hardware forum for the bounty i am about to receive.....

i tried Morpheus..... but i didnt inhale....

 

[jlanka]

Save yourself a lot of trouble. Get a router. 8 port would be good for you, or you can daisy chain a hub off a 4 port to serve all 7 machines.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[tdean]

oh yes, im sorry, i left that out. i am planning on getting a 4 port router. one of myquestions though is, will it affect my lan? or do i just "plug er in" and the router creates the ip address to connect to the internet.... do you know what i mean?

i tried Morpheus..... but i didnt inhale....

 

[jlanka]

Yup - just plug in the router and it will act as a DHCP server and server up IP addresses for you. That's the easiest way to go.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[jihiggs]

you will have to do some configuring. depending on the service you get, you may have to enter a static ip, or if its using pppoe you have to put in your user name and password and enable pppoe, check the connect on demand thing too. you may also have to put in a host name, some isps use that to identify users. then when you get it all up and running you will need to find out what ports you need open to the public, if you are running an ftp server you will have to forward the port to that server. same for your multi player games. for the router i recomend linksys, i have had no problem with my 4 port, had it for about a year now. they make an 8 port too.

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[Guest]

First off - With 7 computers I am assuming you have a switch or - hub, in which case - go get a switch. Buy a Linksys Cable/DSL router for about $90. You only need a one port router since you only have one network. The cable modem will plug into the router and the router will plug into the switch and obvisously the computers will also plug into the switch. With only 7 computers there is really no reason to run DHCP unless you really want to. In the config on the router you will put in the IP address that your ISP gives you. This will be on the WAN side. Next pick a netork address to use for your LAN (e.g. 192.168.100.0) If you choose this then in the router config you would enter an IP address like 192.168.1.1 on the LAN side. Pick some more IP's for the rest of the computers and enter them in the network config on each machine. (e.g. - 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3....etc) In the network config on each machine, set the Default Gateway to the IP address you assigned on the router's LAN side (192.168.1.1). You would also want to set up each computer to connect to the internet through the LAN connection. That is all there is to it.

"Ever park your bike in an airplane hanger..."

 

[Guest]

The example network address above should have read 192.168.1.0 , not 192.168.100.0 Just wanted to clear that up.

<font color=red><i>"Have you ever parked your bike in an airplane hanger..."</i></font color=red>

 

[tdean]

thanks for the tips ummm.... man whore.... lol. heres the problem i have now. i bought the router and have the at&t setup. they didnt give me an ip address. i got one system connected, but the logon server i have, which is running nt server, doesnt connect. this is a problem b/c now when i go to each other machine, i get the log on to network window and i cant log on. the nt server machine, i have connected directly to the router and it is configured to accept ip address from host. when i boot it up however, i get an error stating "the dhcp client could not receive ip address from host". when i run ipconfig, there is nothing.... all zeros. i called lynksys and they couldnt help..... this is turning into a nightmare.... can anyone help????

i tried Morpheus..... but i didnt inhale....

 

[tdean]

**UPDATE** i got all computers working except one. its really a pain in the ass. its running 98se, the nic card is a kingston, and it wont release its ip address. i "think" that is the problem. any ideas?

i tried Morpheus..... but i didnt inhale....

 

[CALV]

what happens when you go to winipcfg, select your adapter, clcik release all?? it should set the ip to 0.0.0.0 you can then clcik renew, it SHOULD pick up an ip form the dhcp server


Next time you wave - use all your fingers

 

[tdean]

hey calv.... yeah, i tried that with two nics and neither will release the ip address. kinda weird i thought. im gonna go buy a new one and see if that helps.

i tried Morpheus..... but i didnt inhale....

 

[CALV]

Im not familiar with that router, Im using a linux box to route my cable, but heres a thought, can you MANUALLY assign an ip to the 98 system? for e.g. if the router is configured to issue addresses from 192.168.0.5 and 192.168.0.200 (for example), could you assign the 98 box to 192.168.0.201 or 192.168.0.4? you may have to enter dns details also, but maybe that is a workaround, as I said, I've not used that router but maybe that is worth a try ?


Next time you wave - use all your fingers

 

[tdean]

ok, we're all up and running!!! thanks everyone, for your help.

i tried Morpheus..... but i didnt inhale....

 

[CALV]

what was the prob? how did you fix it ?


Next time you wave - use all your fingers

 

[Flyboy]

Actually, most routers today will handle the assignment of the IP addresses. You don't have to configure the WAN or LAN IP's. On the WAN side, the router is the client to your ISP, on the LAN side it is the DHCP to your LAN computers. So the router is the gateway. I didn't have to set this either! At least- this is how my Netgear RT314 worked. It was REALLY simple. I think the only thing I had to set was the Domain name of your ISP. So for RRunner it is something like woh.rr.com (for western Ohio). Other than that you should just have to make sure each computer has the necessary protocol (TCP/IP) and NICs, of course.

But definitely get a router, you will be much happier and sane when your done.