W98 nodes won't ping static IP-W2kPro NICs 2

[1Sharon]

Thanks in advance for seeing if you can solve this one.

At the following link is a diagram of how I would like to
expand my small LAN.

http://www.geocities.com/theexactchange/0045/LAN.jpg

My cable ISP won't help with router configuration beyond
just getting me online. No sweat to them if my router
simply takes their plain vanilla DHCP
IP assignment(s) of 192.168.0.1 as the gateway.
Which leaves me on my own (Which could be dangerous,
given I don't understand TCP/IP all that well.)

Okay so 192.168.0.1 becomes the gateway addy. Cool.
From old parts I get the Win98 running, slap a NIC into
all 4 machines and in "Windows connection properties" -
"TCP/IP" - "Properties" I set these 4 primary NICs up
to match the initial DHCP assignments from
the router. So far so good. The 4 PC's (NICs) all see each other
when pinged, plus they all show up in Computers Near Me.

Now for the tricky part...

My understanding is that with the router set up this way,
all 4 of these primary NICS are basically still using
"""Dynamic""" (not Static) IP's. 192...2 thru 192....6.

Static IP addresses are necessary for installing and
running a DNS nameserver. Like BIND for example. Better tho is
SimpleDNS Plus, which can run on a stand-alone, multi-NIC,
W2k Pro machine.

But I don't want to ruin the LAN.

In theory the 2 additional Win2k NICs would each own
Static IP addresses.

Trouble is that for some reason, if I add a "switch"
or a "hub" (where the "??question mark??" is
in my diagram.... and if I give those two NICs IP
addresses in (non-192.x.x.x) 172.16.0.1 or
254.169.x.x private IP ranges, then the two
Win98 machines refuse to ping any non-192.168.0.x
(non-255.255.255.0 subnet mask of) I give to those
two NIC cards. Even as such addresses will
show up fine on an "ipconfig/all".

Just weird how at the same time the Win2k machines
will ping those very same NICs/addresses just fine,
but the Win98 machines won't. Instead the 98 machines
will only ping to the "Request timed out" message.

I am so close yet so far away. Just wondering if a
second router located at my diagram's ??question mark??
would get all the IP addresses seeing each other, no matter
what range of addresses I assign, or what OS I'm pinging from.

Again, thanks verry much if anyone can gimme a clue on this.

Sharon

 

[1Sharon]

Sorry,

Geocities needs the *.htm apparently.

http://www.geocities.com/theexactchange/0045/Lan.htm

Tks again,

Shar

 

[cadaveca]

simply putting a router from router #1 to secondary nics may help you , but why do you want to bridge the connection?

 

[1Sharon]

Thanks for that. Another router is what I thought too.

Tried a "switch" but no go.

What I want to do is run 2 instances of Apache and 2 of a Mailserver for in-house dev. and testing of DHTML, XML, that stuff. Will use SimpleDNS Plus to run as a nameserver. Apache will run virtual hosts, so long as I can keep all those IP addresses in a host file without giving the ISP the security shakes (risks).

Correct me if I'm wrong but if I did go with another router, wouldn't I then be able to set that one up with a different Gateway address -- ie., 172.16.0.1 or .2 which would then allow me to go into that range, right?

Or even that 10.0.0.x range or the 254.169.x.x range if I chose to. And all the while keeping it all in house. Like I say it's just for testing.

Obviously don't care if those two NICs don't show on the LAN. Don't see how they could. But I should thing the 98 machines should at least be able to ping the 2 extra NICS with those alternate address ranges.

Again thanks for the vote of confidence.

Shar

 

[jpm121]

Not sure where you're getting 254.169.x.x from, but that's neither here nor there.

Here's a real simple idea -- are you using a Linksys-type Cable/DSL router with built-in switch? If so, just set your DHCP range to start at 192.168.0.100+ and set your static IPs to 192.168.0.2 and .6 as shown in your diagram. That way you know any DHCP client will not collide with the static IPs.

If it's a Linksys, click on the DHCP page of the setup menu and set the Starting IP address field. Similar manufacturers will be similar.

 

[1Sharon]

Hey Wow,

You know what? That just might be the ticket.

Yeah... that 254.169??... I swear this stuff is making me dyslexic...<g> - that was actually the reverse lookup in-adr-arpa of the 169.254.x.x range.

My router's a Netgear actually - although the switch I bought is a Linksys. $34. And I reckon it's better than the old Netgear Hub... but.. let me know if you think trading the switch in on another router might not be a bad idea.

And thank you very muc, btw.

 

[jpm121]

Okay, I thought you might be thinking the M$ 169.254.x.x &quot;DHCP server not found&quot; default address, which is A Bad Thing (tm).

I'd expect the Netgear would all you to specify the address range for the DHCP addresses it hands out. Just have it start at 192.168.0.100 and you'll be able to support 98 static and 153 dynamic hosts.

Nothing wrong with Linksys switches - I use 'em for cheapies all the time at work.

 

[ricpinto]

Ok, I give it a try:


Yeah... that 254.169??... I swear this stuff is making me dyslexic...<g> - that was actually the reverse lookup in-adr-arpa of the 169.254.x.x range.

When PC can't contact DHCP it will take APIPA like your quote above, so check their connection on why they can't take ip addresses from router's DHCP:

http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/protocolsdhcp/g/bldef_apipa.htm

If you type the ip address of your router in your browser(IE) you can find out the feature and configuration (you can config it as well). Now fill in the ip address of PCs/Servers that you want it to be static. You can exclude them in router's DHCP offerings, if no option for exclusion then just leave it. Do the rest of DHCP config like what DNS and gateway ip address it gonna offer. I'm assuming that your router is supporting NAT as well.

As for the 172.16.x.x is another network, you need another router to separate them from 192.169.0.x. By the way, what's the purpose of this 172.16.x.x network?

 

[1Sharon]

>
>
<b>&quot;As for the 172.16.x.x is another network, you need another router to separate them from 192.169.0.x. By the way, what's the purpose of this 172.16.x.x network?&quot;</b>
>
>
Finally, I discover a group that is both kind and knowledgable.

Thank you as well, ricpinto. Good to get these various answers and interpretations on this stuff.

You guys are great. Can already sense more of the pieces coming together.

Have seen other info on APIPA but that article was more clear about it's purpose.

I must admit my wanting the 172.16.x.x range alongside the 192.168.x.x range for the LAN is partly cosmetic (or anal>), or was because I wasn't sure that jpm121's suggestion - about setting the DHCP range higher (or lower) meant that all the assigned addresses that are outside of that DHCP range would definitely be STATIC addresses.

Most of you here likely know how Apache will let you set <virtualhost (name or IP addy or both)> directives. Well, I guess I just want to be able to use a variety of name resolution instances, and also basically be able to have the private DNS zone(s) distinguishable or separate from the virtual hosting domains. --- mostly to study how all this works on the back end.

But on a more practical side, -- another question here I guess -- is it not also true that a DNS server needs to work in conjunction with a SECONDARY DNS server established as the backup DNS server???? ----- See, my thinking is that to set up such a Testing Lab - you need to have that other DNS zone or Network, set up well outside of the range of say 192.x.x.x. The DNS system is just designed that way for stability reasons.

You will find such configuration settings when you go in to configure a DNS zone using either BIND or, in my (less masochistic) world, with SimpleDNS Plus.

AND HERE'S THE REAL THING.... (or at least my humble understanding of it) If you don't have your own Secondary backup DNS server established in your little private testing world, then your Primary DNS server (which uses an address itself in some range) will always be going out onto the web to do it's &quot;lookups&quot;. This would happen say, if, when I got it all set up for my in-house internet simulation sites, and when those sites might have links to other sites already out on the web.

My big fear is that my unofficial DNS traffic would freak out the ISP. See??

Please if you or anybody reads this and sees me way outta line on this paranoia, please please please try to simplify it for me.

Thanks again,

Sharon

 

[bcastner]

Make the IP entries for the Apache webservers in the HOSTS file for the Win98 clients. Then a DNS server is not involved at all.

You most certainly do not need a secondary DNS server. If you enter A records for all of your virtual domains they would be resolved locally.

 

[jpm121]

Well Sharon, since you're talking about an internal testing environment, your DNS worries should be minimal. First off, there is no requirement that you have a secondary DNS server. You can tell your primary (only) DNS to look to your ISP's resolvers to handle any external requests it needs. Clearly, if you were running an AD domain or something, you'd want redundancy of the DNS server, but not an issue for you.

Since you're not talking about actually hosting an internet-type DNS server internally (i.e. having domain A records pointing to your IP address) your ISP won't see anything more than if you were running Explorer and looking up a website name (i.e. UDP traffic on port 53).

 

[1Sharon]

Okay. Let’s see. First: To bcastner...

Call me nuts but if it won’t gum things up too much to make the Win98 clients do lookups similar to what they would ordinarily need to do out on the web (to access a page or retrieve or receive push-type code), then I don’t think I will mind at all if those clients are forced to interact with the DNS (on the 2 W2k machines) just as they normally would. Maybe I am still in overkill mode here but I would like someone to sit down at any one these machines, type in either an address or a URL, and have it all seem as seamless as possible with the outside web. ---

I understand that tweaking hosts files on the 98 machines would do the trick -- but I think what I want to do is to learn more about how to configure Apache, just as I might if I was to eventually sell virtual hosting services, or sumpin’ like that.

I’ll definitely be using hosts files on the W2k machines. Actually still have an old hosts file from before the cable days, all set up to resolve a number of private IPs for Apache VirtHosts... just don’t want to cheat since I’m uncertain at this point what kinds of Apache directives will require what.

In that light, plus the light where using the IP’s resolver connections might be way more active (DNS-wise) than regular webpage traffic (have seen the lookup stuff scrolling on a SimpleDNS Plus applet) doncha think that maybe a secondary DNS server, in this case, might be a good way to go?

S

..........................

Hey jpm121,

What about this now. SimpleDNS Plus as I recall, will want me to give it a Secondary DNS source. If I attempt to just pass that off onto some existing DNS server out on the outside web, then aren’t I likely to be caught doing all this by the ISP? Chop my fingers off for taxing their precious bandwidth. Could happen.

And plese bear with me on the A Records stuff now. Flashbacks now. I do recall how MX records will need to be in here for purposes of doing the Mailserver thing. (Aside: Which I WANT to do, good-person bcastner.)

So, that in mind, isn’t the official DNS resolver activity way more active than regular web surfing? My DNS server will always be building and amending it’s own cache, right?

You might want to tell me more about where UDP might play in. I did see that Port 53 somewhere and it was making some sense for this desired set up.

I think I am going to go buy the second router this morning and attempt having both ranges to work with (198.x.x.x and 172.x.x.x ).

Also, I guess it could be argued that our posts here are going into the more advanced aspects. This is such a great site. I am now peeking in and studying the posts on the DNS/TCP/IP/DHCP forum cause I don’t want to get out of line here (on this forum) with too much of the DNS stuff.

Back more on topic might go like this.
The 4 machine names, currently, are: www,

http://www2,

http://www3,

http://www4.

They are all in the WORGROUP named (what else) ‘WORKGROUP’.
So here’s another q.
What happens if I go and amend machine ‘

http://www’

(main W2k box) to also have a domain name of abcd.org. Answer: (Hopefully) is that I end up with

http://www.abcd.org

(which yes, will end up listed in it’s own hosts file) as that machine’s “Full computer name:” in Network Identification.

I’m just hoping I can make it do that again now that I finally have a decent LAN goin’ on for the first time in my PC life. Don’t anyone say, Linux or I think I’ll scream.

Sharon

 

[bcastner]

Just some comments:

1. You computer names while not strictly rserved for machine names are ill-advised choices when using DNS instead of Netbios to resolve naming. It is an unecessary and potentially confusing as www,

http://www1,

http://www2,

http://www3,

www4 are all valid prefixes on the internet.

2. I know nothing of your DNS server, but likely you will find port forwarding necessary in your plans. It is at that point that your router's inability to do reverse lookups between WAN and LAN sides of itself will prove fatal to your plans.

The use of HOSTS entries in this situation is not a poor solution. It is entirely appropriate.

 

[ricpinto]

I won't blame you if you gonna post this DNS/TCP/IP/DHCP forum. Things are becoming complicated from a simple start. As for the DNS, I would agree that you can get away without a sec. DNS.

Basically you need some kind of a way to contact ISP DNS when your local DNS can't resolved names (mostly external names -

http://WWW.)

and microsoft way is to use forwarders. To do that, you have to open the DNS mgt console (got no server beside me coz I'm at home) so roughly I'm just gonna say it on top of my head. Right click the servername on dns snap-in and look for &quot;forwarders&quot; tab. Here you can enter your ISP dns ip adresses. Sometimes it's greyed-out so what you gonna do is to goto forward zone and look for &quot;.&quot; folder(root), delete it and forget about it. Go back to &quot;forwarders&quot; then enter the ISP dns adresses.


On server side the DNS IP is also the server IP address assuming your DNS is AD integrated and residing on this DC. Do this the same as the workstation the DNS ip points to your AD integrated DNS. So if you're using DHCP, configure it to use this as its DNS offerings as well.

 

[1Sharon]

Guys,

If we could back up just a bit here...

The objective of this thread was simply this, to get the 2 secondary NIC cards to be ping-able on a private IP range which would be different from the 192.168.x.x range.

192.xxx.x.x uses the 255.255.255.0 mask.
172.16.x.x uses 255.255.0.0.

So can I just basically feel confident that a second router purchase, placed between the first router and the 2 secondary NICs, will be configurable to the 172.16.x.x - even though this second router will be needing to also go back to use the 192.x.x.x gateway (of the LAN NICs and the ISP.

Note:

SimpleDNS Plus is in fact a true nameserver just like BIND. It knows to go out and look up addresses on the inet naming system in cases when it does not know such-and-such an ID-name-IP-resolution in it's own cache. I forgot to mention that in place of abcd.xxx I will (for now anyway) instead be using my own legally registered .org suffix with the &quot;

http://www&quot;

in that &quot;full computer name&quot; prefix. So when any true

http://www surfing

takes place, nothing is likely to hijack (or be confused by) any existing public site.

Correct me if I'm wrong but since my 2 &quot;server&quot; machines are Win2k.... so as far as I know there is no DNS snap-in available... until I install SDNS Plus; and if this was Win2k Server, it would have a more full-blown version of that DNS snap in, and I wouldn't be needing to use SimpleDNS Plus.

Also, ricpinto, AD is Active Directory, isn't it? And DHCP is dynamic?? I guess I'm burning out here but how would those two items help me with the main objective of getting the secondary NICs to own static private IP addys and help them to become ping-able.

Yes the DNS IP would become the Server IP. Or vice versa. And I think I read someplace that the Secondary DNS server would have to be on a diff subnet, in which case one of the 192.x.x.x should work.

Like I say... just need to know if the 2nd router can be configured as a non-192.x.x.x gateway. Then (arrrghgh, I think.) I'm good to go.

Again thanks very much and won't blame yaz if you guys are getting tired of this, er, challenge. Maybe it's an M$ thing afterall.

Sharon

 

[1Sharon]

The saga (and challange) continues...

In (one of) our last episodes...

bcastner correctly pointed out that if I elected to settle for maintaining a synchronized &quot;host(s)&quot;-file(s) on each the 4 Windows machines that this would allow stations on my LAN to access my designed UltraDev sites being served with The Apache Foundation's Apache httpd server software.

The following quote from another networking support-site substantiates bcastner's recommendation.

...............................

Very small sites that are not connected to the Internet sometimes use the host table. If there are few local hosts and the information about these hosts rarely changes, and there is no need to communicate via TCP/IP with remote sites, then there is little advantage to using DNS.

................................

However, I hope someone will follow up on this thread as I have since purchased a 2nd Router, a Linksys BEFSR41.

In the development of the site I can't get around the necessity of using DNS. &quot;Why&quot;.

Dreamweaver UltraDev is able to handle advanced site code writing using PHP and the like. For purposes of explaining the need for DNS processing then, on the site in question we will be obtaining permissions from other nationally recognized organizations, to use select pages from their sites, within an HTML-frames content delivery structure.
Therefore doing (serving up) our own DNS in this testing lab will ensure that all Apache configuration files and all Dreamweaver files will upload to our hosting service in the most accurate and cost efficient manner. No bugging the hosting service five times a day trying to get the settings right on one or another of our virtual hosts. Apache directives files, CGI scripting, permissions, database mngment, and so on will just be a matter of overwriting such files from here.

Meanwhile the UltraDev files will all be in synch with the links. Adjustments and updates can be ftp'd without a lot of downtime doing URL rewriting searches and replacements and so on. Annnnnd, our principles can always walk in and sit at one of our display terminals and poke around the site, linking out to the web, and back within the designed site, just as they would be able to on the live - public - site.

...................................

That said, I've been asked to come back here and probe your collective wisdoms a little further.

The boss is adamant about this DNS thing.

The 2 extra NICs in the Win2k boxes need to have fixed IP addresses.

I am hoping not to screw up the existing LAN so at this hour, here's the plan.

Connect the WAN port of the new Linsys BEFSR41 to the Uplink port of the Linksys switch (which is taking in the Internet connection from a Netgear cable router).

The new Linksys router will then feed the 2 extra NICs in the two W2k boxes. When setting up this new router I will at first set the NICs to obtain their IP's from the Linksys' DHCP. Fortunately I see the Linksys default range won't collide with the Netgear's, but not that anything should be easy, I am suspecting that I will need to extend the IP range of the Netgear to accomodate what the Linksys router will want to have, at first.

From there, I guess I'm on my own with trying to set the Static IP's on the NICs. Will likely (read, probably????) be using NAT I guess - or Port Forwarding - or both - but obviously a little more guidance couldn't hurt.

And if anyone decides to, please keep in mind I'm not too nuts about the idea of designing with frames, either; but it would seem my paycheck might kinda depend on that as well, see.

All I really think I need to know at this point is what I have to do to the Linksys - to get it to Gateway to the Netgear router (what IP range) and for it to then route these 2 extra NICs (hopefully in a class B range of 172.1x.x.x - using a subnet masking calculator if necessary) to be addressed by browsers out on our original LAN.

Thanks again for all previous efforts. Bossman knows what he wants. I'll give'm that much.

S

 

[ricpinto]

I just saw your diagram(sorry for that clumsiness), well it's a little bit complicated if there's no DNS server here. What's keeping you from installing a Win2k server?