strange ip in config

[Kesser]

My colleague has been trying to network two machines together for the past two days in order to enable the customer to use internet connection sharing. The machines are both running XP home edition and are 'branded'. The user wants to use AOL (why is anyone's guess) and has checked with AOL that the version they have signed up for (Silver) allows multiple IPs.

The problem is that they just won't see each other at all! My colleague has set and configured a variety of networks but just cannot get this one to work. Each machine responds to pinging but when you go to cmd and type in ipconfig/all, the following information is displayed as the ip:

ip address: FE80:204:61FFFE6C:F6E%7

dns: FEC0:0:0:FFF:1%4

I have never seen anything like this before and niether has my colleague...

Any ideas? We have ever tried new LAN cards and cable but I feel that it software based rather than hardware and it didn't work anyway....

Any help would be much appreciated..... AOL insist that it is possible with the silver version..

Kesser

 

[IPDetective]

Do both pc's have the NetBEUI protocol installed? This greatly helps small networks communicate or for direct connecttions.


Regards,

Myles
myles@ipdetective.ca

 

[Kesser]

Yes all of that was checked - we think it is a problem with his AOL account not allowing more than one IP at the moment but we will have to wait 14 days to find this out....

I will report back when I find out for sure, in the meantime if anyone has any ideas etc. I would be grateful, someone said that the odd looking IPs are actually MAC addresses but that doesn't mean a great deal to me - does anyone know the relevance of this? Thanks so far....

Kes

 

[IPDetective]

Yes, that may be and issue. I know that with our Telus account you are alowed 3 IP addresses but you have to go on thier web site and register the Mac address of each device that will be on the network and the that device will be allowed to recieve an ip address. The mac address is a sort of hard-coded identification of a device such as a computer. It stands for Media Access Control address.

With telus you go to a certain web page from each computer and tell it to register this device and it will grab your mac address and then you will be allowed to be assigned an ip address.

I don't know if that is how AOL works but the reason is that they can try to limit the number of devices you have on the network by tracking the mac address.

Hope this helps.

Myles Pang
myles@ipdetective.ca

 

[Kesser]

That is really helpful, thanks, it makes more sense to me know...

I'm pretty sure that AOL is the problem now but it is so frustrating trying to get any sense out of them as they use indian call centres and all thier operators seem to know nothing but the script they have been trained in...

Kes

 

[DJMittens]

That Telus procedure is pretty weird. Comcast does tracking based on the MAC of the modem (or "account") and leases IPs based on the number of IPs allowed for that modem. If there are too many IPs leased to a given modem, it stops leasing them.

However, Comcast is fairly lenient, and the DHCP won't stop leasing if you exceed the limit once in a while. If you do it all the time, then it'll shut you down.

But no, I don't think that's the issue here. I think TCP/IP is fuggered. You say the PCs respond to pings - so one PC can ping the other, right? That would not really make sense, if the IP they're getting is that crazy hex string. Are the machines able to surf at all? Ping remote servers at all? Ping localhost even? I'd start from there, try to see how much talking the two computers can do.

Heck, it doesn't hurt to reset TCP/IP. "netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt" at the command prompt, and make sure you don't get any errors.

 

[tekguy88]

You cannot network Windows XP home edition. You will need to upgrade to Windows XP Professional.

 

[Kesser]

I have a network of four machines at homes all running Windows XP Home so I beg to differ .....

 

[Kesser]

Thanks for all your input folks - the problem was eventually tracked down to AOL who had not supplied the correct software for the account and it was stopping the sharing...

It was a learning experience for me anyway so thanks guys!

Kes

 

[martyh]

Just FYI, the strange IPs you were seeing here were not MAC addresses, I think they are router generated unique identifiers. The client identifier is formed by concatenating the media type and the MAC address. This is typically seen when a CISCO router is configured as a DHCP server.

Of course, I could be way off. Wouldn't be the first time

Marty
Network Admin
Hilliard Schools

 

[aftertaf]

anyone ever heard of IPv6 ???
that's what you're seeing, its the new version IP addresses!!!!


Aftertaf (david)
MCSA 2003

 

[aftertaf]

anyone ever heard of IPv6 ???
that's what you're seeing, its the new version IP addresses!!!!

however, might NOT be....
just a suggestion

Aftertaf (david)
MCSA 2003

 

[GlenJohnson]

The machines are both running XP home edition

You have 2 strikes against you, xp home AND aol. Neither are really any good. Just my 2 cents worth. Stick with W2K and another provider. Granted, the problem is solved for now, but problems will arise in the future. Good luck.

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[DJMittens]

It's not IPv6. IPv6 is a 128-bit address (versus IPv4's 32-bit), arranged into eight 16-bit sets. Eg:

FEDC:BA98:7654:3210:FEDC:BA98:7654:3210

 

[grpsis2]

I would agree with aftertaf, Remove the IPv6 network option from the mix and reboot.