Subj : Re: Network setup To : mark lewis From : Ben Carpenter Date : Tue Nov 05 2002 04:46 pm -=> Quoting mark lewis to Ben Carpenter <=- 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. ml> i assume by this that you mean that you have explicitly gone into the ml> protocol settings for TCP/IP and taken the checkmark out of the "i ml> want to enable netbios over tcp/ip" box on the netbios tab?? My first gut reaction to this question was yes but when looking at it is is checked and grayed out so I can not change it. No time today to look farther on this. I do not have print or file sharing checked in the TCP/IP but they are checked in the NETBIOS. 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? ml> that one machine can act as those 3 routers... however, it'll take ml> linux and configuration of an ipchains or iptables routing firewall ml> structure... it can be very convoluted if you try to route between the ml> cards but should be pretty straight forward otherwise... since each ml> card will have an address in each network, it'll do the work of ml> them... At this time the extra machine does not sound to me like a route I want to take along with the new learning curve it would require to learn Linux. 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? ml> that's one thing i'm not sure of, myself... its why i go with either ml> dedicated routers or set up a machine... my home network currently has ml> one such machine in it... set up pretty much like i showed except that ml> 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. ml> nothing to it... they don't care about each other, really... at least ml> not at the network level if they are addressed properly... its the ml> hardware level that may get tricky... i learned to not use cheap ml> cards... those two in my box mentioned above are different... one is a ml> cheapie and the other is a 3com, IIRC... the 3com is much faster and ml> doesn't have the collision errors on the hub (yeah, just a hub, not a ml> 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. ml> that will also depend on what else the machine is/was doing... and the ml> cards as well as the speed of the machine and the network... i don't ml> think i'd do a four card router with anything less than a AMD K6-2 ml> 500mhz box with 128 of ram... nothing fancy software wise installed ml> either... no Xwindows unless absolutely necessary for configuration ml> purposes only and turn off most all the daemons and servers... if you ml> wanted to, you could have a DMZ with another box for in house email ml> and web server and such... but it doesn't appear that you need ml> anything like that... the faster the machine doing the routing and the ml> less it has to do, the better things will be... I do not know how fast his machine was but I know that he only had two card in it one for the cable connection and one for the network connection and used a hub to connect the workstations, and he did not use that machine for anything else at all. BC> Please explain LMHOSTS files to me. ml> its a way of telling NETBIOS where the machines are on the WAN when ml> they are in different networks or subnets... i only brought it up ml> because it might be needed =if= you find that you do need to contact ml> one of those machines on another network or subnet... At this point we will drop this until later when it might be needed. Frank Reid has made some comments. Do you care to comment on his comments. Over all at this point I am just getting information and not doing any experiments at all. That will come at some time in the future ( about a month from now) when I may have a little more time on my hands. .... Ben .... Laundry: A place where clothes are mangled. --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 * Origin: COMM Port OS/2 juge.com 204.89.247.1 (281) 980-9671 (1:106/2000) .