Starband 360 and WinProxy on Win 2k Server

[lmrapp]

Anybody know what this problem might be?

I bought a Starband 360. We installed it on my Win2k Server, an HP E800. There was only one network card, so we used that. The next day I bought another card, a NetGear and added it to the server. I can't get the network operating over the second card, although I can ping in both directions by either name or ip address. The workstations are Win 2k professional and there is an LMHOSTS file on them, so I'm not sure if DNS is working. The 2d network card is setup as 192.168.0.1. The first card gets everything from the starband - ip, gateway, and dns. I bought and installed WinProxy as recommended by Starband.

The other symptom is that the Starband will not work when the first NIC is enabled. It will boot up and immediately disable. It looks like it is detecting the second MAC address and shutting down, but the Starband folks claim that can't be. If I disable the second NIC, Starband works ok, but will quit shortly after I enable the second card.

So it looks like I have two problems - getting the network (TCPIP) protocol to work via the second card, and getting the Starband to work with the second card in place.

Please help if you can. Thanks,

Larry
--
rapp@lmr.com

 

[PaulG4AWZ]

Imrapp
I guess the starband is a Satellite 2 way IP gateway,you say you installed it ON your HP PC is this a card installed IN the computer or a seperate box? I can only guess the sat gateway has its own IP address...I guess you are not using the off internet internal address structure as recommended by Microsoft. i.e. 10.0.0.xxx with mask @255.255.255.0
the first card as 10.0.0.2 and the second 10.0.0.3 and all the other machines with the same IP series.......

 

[lmrapp]

The Starband 360 is a separate unit. I installed an additional NIC on the HP NetServer E800. That NIC is configured to obtain IP and DNS addresses from Starband. The HP unit is assigned 192.168.0.1. The workstations connected to it all currently use static addresses in the 192.168.0.200 - 204 range. We use the 255.255.255.0 subnet mask for all of them. So far as I knew the 192.168.x.x subnet was unroutable just as the 10.0.0.x. Are you saying that I should be using the 10.0 subnet instead?

The problem appears to be in some conflict between the WinProxy DNS and the MS DNS services. I can get this to partially work by having the workstations log into the server while the MS DNS is on and the WinProxy DNS is off. Then I shut down MS DNS and turn on WinProxy DNS and can send and receive mail via numeric IP addresses, but not browse the internet using http or https or ftp protocols.

Larry
--
rapp@lmr.com

 

[Guest_imported]

you have to have the first nic set to auto detect ip. it will resolve as 192.168.0.1
the second nic (the one you are using as a connection to your local network) should be set to something in the same class c 192.168.0.2, or 192.168.0.255 - whatever...

allow connection sharing on the second nic (right click the connection and check the sharing tab)

set the other machines on the network to auto detect ip, they'll be in the same range

use ipconfig from the command line to see the ip's of your connections easily

 

[lmrapp]

One NIC is set to 192.168.0.1. That is the NIC used for the PDC to connect to the local network. The second NIC is already set to auto-detect. I don't want to allow connection sharing - there are too many security holes. Instead, I am using WinProxy which is a combo proxy and firewall. Ipconfig indicates all ok.

It appears that the problem is with Starband. While it appears to work, proxy cascading does not. I am going to try to reinstall the new software. That was the main problem.

Now I just have one situation to clear up. The PDC is where the connection to the outside world (starband) lives. I am not sure how to connect the DNS of the server to the DNS servers on Starband without allowing the Starband computers knowing the info on the PDC. Also, I have some exceptions - for example,

http://www.lmr.com

does not reside here - it lives at another IP, but there should be a way to have my client machines look to the W2K server for DNS and have the DNS service on the PDC look ahead to the DNS servers on the ISP (Starband) without revealing any internal addresses here.

For now, I guess I'll just map everything here statically and put the Starband DNS servers as lookups on the local machines. We'll see if that works...

Larry

 

[Petrohead]

Hi Imrapp, I have this identical setup at home and have setup over a dozen starband networks for small business's and home owners with multiple computers. It's quite simple really with w2k. First thing you may want to do is dump the winproxy software. I know that starband endorses it, however they don't support it. Go figure.It uses DNE mac shims as does the starband software. It's possible that you have different versions of the DNE installed and you can figure out the rest of the story there. I would also suggest writing down all your config settings for starband such as cluster, sub cluster, etc. and then uninstall the starband software as well. Remove all instances of the DNE in device manager as well. Clean the reg of all things related to starband, gilat and spacenet. Disable the NIC that will go to your network for now and make sure that the NIC for *band is set to get it's ip automagically. This reminds me ........ the NIC that will connect to the starband modem must be the first one listed on the PCI bus. Just right click on each one to be sure. This is a must, because when you install the *band software it will find the first NIC and quit looking and then bind the DNE to it. Boot to safe mode and remove any left overs in device manager. Now re-boot and re-install starband this time don't except the agreement (its for the ms browser), everthing you need is there at this point. Configure the modem and re-boot. Once you are satisfied with your ability to surf, ftp, etc. go to the properties for the *band NIC and turn on ICS. You can filter the traffic you're concerned about with a 50 dollar switch to the network. Firewall the gateway NIC and make sure all client nodes are pointed to 192.168.0.1 and port 9877. Your good to go.

 

[lmrapp]

Thanks for the tips, but I've had it working for some time now, and with WinProxy. I'd stay away from ICS as it offers no virus protection, although if I were sufficiently motivated, I'd love to stick this thing on a Linux or Berkley Free Unix box and dump Windows 2k althogether. job. Until I do, WinProxy seems to be doing a pretty decent job at trapping virii.

The fix, as I recall had to do with DNS and a conflict in Win 2k which prevented the use of an external DNS server. I don't remember the exact details, but it had something to do with the Win 2k server not functioning without DNS, not because of DNS, but because of needing a service (telephony, maybe?) as a prereq for something else which was needed for host validation. The eventual fix was to boot up with DNS, and then stopping the service while placing the entire network in the manual section of the WinProxy DNS server. There's been an MS patch since then which quietly removed the improper prereq order.

Again, thanks anyway for responding!

Larry

 

[MoonHare]

I'm wondering if Larry ever set his Starband up with Linux? I have my satellite modem connected to an old IBM Aptiva with Win98SE and want to reconfigure. Eventually I want to setup an intranet... right now I use several computers in my office, each one for a specific purpose, and have been transfering stuff between them by zip drive. I haven't connected them because they all have different operating systems (and it was over my head), but it is time to set up the intranet. However I am worried that the StarBand will be problematic. The old server (PCServer320) I intend to use as the intranet host will only run O/SII, NTserver, Linux or Win3.1 (IBM says the last is impossible! but its what I have used on it for 10 years).

Will it be possible to put the satellite modem on an intranet client, rather than on the host? And will this give me any protection (by having a double firewall) from hacker attack? Or should I just stick with the zip drives?

One final note about Starband, if you have trouble getting it to load because of your virus checker (the TaskBarClient is sooooo picky!), try taking the taskbarclient and the AS_agent out of your startup, and load them manually after your system is up and running. It helps in some cases.

Yours,
The Moonhare

 

[lmrapp]

Thanks for the post. I have not setup Starband with Linux yet, but that is on my list of things to do. The problem is that the Starband provided software is written for Windows and uses Windows calls not present in Linux. However, since it supports DNS and DHCP under their RFC's, it might well work on any TCP/IP environment so long as it is on a gateway machine running Windows.

My setup has been working for months now. The critical thing is to make sure that no gateway entry is entered on the gateway machine's intranet NIC.

Best,

Larry
rapp@lmr.com