Router interface to internet makes PC's always connected

[bobmcb]

I installed a Speedstream 2614 router between my DSL modem and one of the hubs on my local ethernet network. Now, all PC's can get on the internet at the same time however, all are actually connected to the internet just as soon as they power up.

Is there a version of a router that prevents a PC from being hot to the internet until the user actually requests a connection. Subsequently, the user should be able to disconnect when desired. In addition to fire walls, this would provide some additional security.


I got a further problem when I installed the router. I am not sure what did it, however, now my local network no longer can see the other PC's. It was working perfectly for file and printer sharing. Not sure if it went away with DSL initially when I did the SBC DSL install or when I installed the router. This was my primary backup strategy so I need to figure what happened and fix it.

Dinosnake helped me get the network working correctly to begin with. Maybe he has some ideas now.

Thanks
Bob McBirney
bobmcb@sbcglobal.net

 

[groundrush]

Hi Bob,

I hope I can help you out here - let's give it a shot.

The first question about having PC's only connect to the Internet when they actually request a connection is a bit of a strange one - I'm not aware of any way you can do this without using a proxy server (WinRoute, MS Proxy Server etc). In a normal routed LAN you often use a firewall or router, preferably with NAT (Network Address Translation) running. With this setup, your client pc's will use private (i.e. not 'routeable' from the Internet) addresses. These are typically 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x IP's.

The router or modem will use a Public IP, which IS routeable from the Internet. This means the only thing that can be connected to from the outside is the router or modem, not any of your more sensitive pc's. So when a PC makes a connection to a host on the Internet, it's actually 'borrowing' the router's public IP for the purpose of this outbound connection. Inbound packets that the router recieves on behalf of the client are accepted and passed to the client machine, as part of the same connection. That way Internet machines (i.e. Joe Hacker's nasty workstation) can never actually initiate a connection to a machine on your network.

So i hope that covers the first bit - I've not gone into much detail and given a VERY simple explanation of NAT for the purpose of this post, there's actually rather a lot more to it

So as for part II, your internal file-sharing shouldn't really have been affected at all. I don't know your router, but if it's like 99.9% of all small DSL gateway routers it should not affect your local traffic at all.

The first thing to do is try using PING to test your basic IP connectivity between your PC's. Open a command-prompt box, type 'ping' followed by any of the other machines' IP addresses. You should get a 'reply from x.x.x.x etc etc' msg.

If you get a timeout msg, you've probably got a pretty basic addressing of even cabling issue.

Let me know how you get on anyway and we'll see if we can fix this

GRush

 

[bobmcb]

Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense, in that the LAN (inside world) is using a series of IP addresses assigned by the router and they are not visable to the WAN (outside world). I think I was inventing a problem that I really did not have.

Second issue on file and printer sharing and where it went - still do not know but will isolate (backout) the changes I have made since it did work and see what is really going on.

Thanks again for the help.

Bob McBirney
bobmcb@sbcglobal.net

 

[groundrush]

No problem Bob,

The best place to start with your file sharing is as usual at the beggining
If you can ping the IP's of the other PC's, you'll be able to verify that at least the IP stuff works.

If that works, the next thing to try is pinging a machine name. You can find out what your machine names are by digging through your network properties etc.
so you just do a 'ping (machine name)' and your should get a reply from x.x.x.x'

If that is the case, try doing a 'find computer'.
Right click on network neighborhood and select 'find computer' type the machine name and see if anything is found.

Hope that gets you a bit further - good luck..

GRush