How can I connect two computers over a router or switch?

[orange]

Fellow soulmates:

I have a Barricade router and a 3com switch. I use the router for internet and I have two computers who share it. I have been trying to get the computers to share data too but it has been hopeless. I have win98 SE on both of them, cat 5 cables, 10/100b cards, and I have verified that my router assigns a different IP address to each computer (which means that it can see them on the network). I did file sharing, assign common workgroup name to both computers, and just about everything else but actually hooking them on a hub. I hooked up the switch with the router, it worked but still there was no LAN communication.

Can you please help me connecting my computers without buying yet another piece of expensive equipment - just to share a few files here and there? What is the missing link?

Regards,

GM

 

[Blixa]

Some steps I would try..

#1 Disconnect the router and only connect the two W98 machines to the switch. Set different static IP numbers with the correct subnetmask (something like machine1 = 192.168.1.10 and machine2 = 192.168.1.11 and then a subnetmask of 255.255.255.0). Doublecheck to see if they have the same workgroup name (for better browsing)

#2 Check if you can ping between machines.. If this doesn't work.. try it again with different cables! If it works proceed to #3.

#3 Share a folder on machine1.. in my example I call it test. On machine2 go to the startmenu => run and type \\machine1\test .. (ofcause with your computername instead of machine1) .. Does this work? If not.. well.. give us more info like what kind of hardware are you using and so on!

Hope something I wrote makes sense.. After you get basic network connectivity to work you will still have some configuring left todo, but at least you would have verified that every component on you lan works!

Cheers!
/Jonas

 

[Blixa]

ooops.. for clarification you should just write
\\machine1\test
under start => run. Sorry for the .. dots!

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

From what I can see the barricade router is a combined router/switch so the problem you are having seems a bit odd. It looks as if that device employs nat for the internet connection and also has a built-in dhcp server to configure the attached PCs with 'lan' addresses. If this is working OK, then they would be certain to be configured on the same subnet and I can't understand why it wouldn't just work. You could try doing a manual ip config on the windows boxes -->

http://www.smc.com/index.cfm?action=support_tools_show_FAQ&note_id=74

.

If it still doesn't work, I'd suggest just leaving it all as dhcp, patching the two PCs into the 3Com switch and then patching the switch to the router. This might work better if there is something wrong with the switch functionality of the router.

Otherwise, post what ip config is set by the router on both machines (run WINIPCFG command).

Rgds