Subj : Network setup To : Ben Carpenter From : mark lewis Date : Tue Nov 05 2002 01:37 am BC> We use NETBIOS for file sharing but not over BC> TCP/IP. The only thing we use TCP/IP for is BC> internet connection. i assume by this that you mean that you have explicitly gone into the protocol settings for TCP/IP and taken the checkmark out of the "i want to enable netbios over tcp/ip" box on the netbios tab?? BC> What would be the difference be between the machine BC> you described with 4 NIC's compared to the present BC> DSL router and 3 more routers behind that? that one machine can act as those 3 routers... however, it'll take linux and configuration of an ipchains or iptables routing firewall structure... it can be very convoluted if you try to route between the cards but should be pretty straight forward otherwise... since each card will have an address in each network, it'll do the work of them... BC> Another question is can a router with a 4 port hub BC> built in have the output connections assigned an IP BC> address to eliminate the three routers for each BC> workgroup? that's one thing i'm not sure of, myself... its why i go with either dedicated routers or set up a machine... my home network currently has one such machine in it... set up pretty much like i showed except that its only got two cards and the third is a modem... BC> The one thing I am a little fuzzy about is if I setup BC> a machine with 4 NIC's to act as a router is how to BC> assign different IP addresses to the different NIC's BC> and not have them interfere with each other. nothing to it... they don't care about each other, really... at least not at the network level if they are addressed properly... its the hardware level that may get tricky... i learned to not use cheap cards... those two in my box mentioned above are different... one is a cheapie and the other is a 3com, IIRC... the 3com is much faster and doesn't have the collision errors on the hub (yeah, just a hub, not a switch) that the tulip based card has... BC> I have a friend that used a computer for a router for BC> a while and when he replaced that with a router/hub BC> raised his trough put a lot. He was not trying to BC> separate things like I am, but just was feeding one BC> network from the cable connection he has. that will also depend on what else the machine is/was doing... and the cards as well as the speed of the machine and the network... i don't think i'd do a four card router with anything less than a AMD K6-2 500mhz box with 128 of ram... nothing fancy software wise installed either... no Xwindows unless absolutely necessary for configuration purposes only and turn off most all the daemons and servers... if you wanted to, you could have a DMZ with another box for in house email and web server and such... but it doesn't appear that you need anything like that... the faster the machine doing the routing and the less it has to do, the better things will be... BC> Please explain LMHOSTS files to me. its a way of telling NETBIOS where the machines are on the WAN when they are in different networks or subnets... i only brought it up because it might be needed =if= you find that you do need to contact one of those machines on another network or subnet... )\/(ark * Origin: (1:3634/12) .