Networking problems

[fgbuenavista]

Hello guyz,
Good Day to all. I've got a problem on my peer-to-peer to lan connections. I have 9 pc's, one running on winxp box and rest are all win98. I used winxp as my ICS HOST and run internet wizard on all win98. Sometime the win98 box can access the net, sometime they won't. And most of all, some win98 box does'nt exist on network neighborhood. Some find only itself in the network neighborhood.
Please i'm badly in need of professional help here. I'm totally technically blind in networking. I just set-up this small business of mine.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Splixx]

I'm not sure exactly how many clients your XP box could host with ICS.
I would recommend you purchase a cheap linksys-type router and set up a network that way.
Hypotheticly, your XP box might be dropping network requests because it's overworked and thats why you have intermittant connectivity.
This is assuming you have a broadband connection.
Also try using a switch instead of a hub for 9 computers, you will see a increase in network throughput.

 

[fgbuenavista]

Splixx,
Thanks for the swiftly reply. About my connection, I only have dial-up for now, linksys 16 port switch. About the router, no idea how it works. But, I will try to look at it.
Btw, I try pinging each pcs and I found very strange things. Sometimes, i got 4 reply successful. When i ping again, i got 3 reply success and 1 request timed-out. And sometimes in reply successful, the time=1ms TTL=128, instead of time=<10ms TTL=32.
Thanks!

 

[oceanid1]

Are you running a workgroup? if yes then you can only have 10 client machines in a workgroup. What you should do if you have 10 or less client machines running is to run the new Connnection wizard and recreate the workgroup run the floppy on each machine which will participate in the workgroup

 

[fgbuenavista]

oceanid1,
Thanks. Yup! i'm using a workgroup and I already run connection wizard on its 98box.

 

[oceanid1]

I don't know your setup but you may want to look at hard ware as the problem. Try this set up a network analyzer and check the behavior of you network also you may want to
disable everything in you local area contection except for
Clients for microsoft and tcp/ip

 

[Splixx]

In a LAN enviroment you should never drop packets. Try this:

bring up the command prompt on the XP box by going to start > run > and type CMD
Then ping all of your boxes at the same time with the &quot;ping -t XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX&quot; The XXX's indicate the clients IP. You can open up a command prompt to ping each client and see if certain ones get more drops. That might suggest bad ports or cabling.


If your trying to allow all 10 computers to share one dial up connection simeultaneously your going to have problems. Its like 10 people trying to drink a soda through one coffee stirrer/straw.
A network isnt a bad idea for file and print sharing but I think web surfing is out of the picture.