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"HELP NEEDED: HOME NETWORK"

Right, I have:

A P2 400 with NT
A P 66 with 98

and I could get a P 100 with 98...

I want to set 2 of these up so that i an share a modem between them... what is the best option?

Sonic

Yeah, but it's more exepnsive than buying them seperately.

Don't Maplin do a "home network" kit for just such a purpose?

Whooo Style! wrote:
> Rob, do you know how much a LAN router (modemy thing) would cost him?? My
> method is much cheaper.


Yes Andi, that's why I advised him to buy network cards! Jeez...

Well, first a bit of networking theory..

Assuming you're using TCP/IP, which is standard on the internet.. the following applies:

* Every computer has at least one interface
* Every interface has one and only one IP address.

An interface can either be a network card or your modem device. You'd need to buy some network cards if you don't have them already, and decide how to connect them. I use BNC (TV coax-like networking with terminators on the end) here at home, but between two computers RJ45 crossover is also fine. If you wanted to use RJ45 for more than two boxes you'd need a hub, which could get costly..

Anyway..

On the internal LAN (local area network, or just "network") you would assign some unroutable IP subnet, for this lan I use 10.0.0.x, where x is the IP address of the interface on a given box on my network. For example, I have two computers in the loft (a firewall/gateway and a server) which I call 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 respectively. Btw, the subnet mask for 10.0.0.x is 255.0.0.0 (you'll need this in your networking options later.)

Once you've got your internet network working and can "ping" between the hosts (I can explain this in more detail later), you can start to think about providing internet access.

Choose one computer which is the most reliable, or likely to be on the most, and attach the modem to it. This will be assigned a dynamic IP (which means it changes, the opposite to static) each time it dials up. This box will act as the "gateway" to the internet, which means that all the other computers on the internet network will connect /through/ it to get to the rest of the internet, which uses a clever technique known as IP Masquerading, which I won't go into now ;)

You'd point all your other computers to use the IP address of the gateway as, surprisingly, the "Gateway" section of the network settings, sort out DNS from the internal hosts (preferably set up BIND on the gateway, but this isn't necessary), and hey presto, you'll have internet access from all your other computers.

I don't know how much you know about networking or how much of this has gone completely over your head, but give it a go and feel free to ask me questions, I'll give you my email address if you want :)

Rob, do you know how much a LAN router (modemy thing) would cost him?? My method is much cheaper.

If its just two then you could get away with just using two Network Cards and a cross over cable. To link the third up you'll need a hub and some normal network cables (NOT cross over type). This is more expensive, but not incredibly. My whole network consists of a hub and a variety of 2-6m cables, i have the capability of linking four PCs, which I have done but most of the time it just my PC and the lappy.

You need to get some hardware sorted, then enable ICS. Which PC is the modem on? Could this be changed easily enough? Most of the stuff just means configuring Windows, no extra software or anything, so I'll dig out some links for you.

LAN modem or ethernet. Buy ethernet network cards.

Right, I have:

A P2 400 with NT
A P 66 with 98

and I could get a P 100 with 98...

I want to set 2 of these up so that i an share a modem between them... what is the best option?

Sonic