Networking for Idiot's

[drezha]

Right need some help with networking.

Now it's not my strong point but I have been able to run my PC and laptop and media center off one hub at Uni no probs. Everything set to automatic and it's fine and dandy.

BUT

In July I'm moving into a shared house with a bunch of mates. Here's where my netowrking knowledge falls down. :-(

There's 4 of us in the house but with my 3 PC's it starts to get confusing. The media ceneter will move to the lounge and I'll have my lappy and PC in my room and others will have PC's in there rooms.

Now it was fine and we wanted a wired netowrk but it wont really work with the hub because the modem is not near any PC's (except the downstairs media center..)

Now I need to know some answers to questions..:(

*Could we use the modem to plug into the media center then use the media into the hub and connect the hub to the other 6 PC's or not?

*I have a 4 port wireless router with modem. Using this will it only support 4 system's right? I was thinking 4 machine on the ports it has and then using the wireless for the other machines.

*Whats the difference between router and switch? I know a router gives each PC an IP address but a switch?

*Whats my best bet? Buying a 8 port wireless router? (Only one guy really wants wireless so would it be better for us to buy an 8 port router with modem and have him but a USB wireless dongle thing and then bridge the connections on say my PC? (Mine'll be on 24/7)

All recommendations appriciated. Espcially on the hardware side of things.. :)

Cheers in advance

[Nflight]

Your not considered an idiot because your willing to ask questions to resolve the issue, idiots stand around with there hands in there pockets and never tell anyone they can't do it.

So you want to know about setting up a wireless connection, your in College or Tech School where there will be a bunch of "Learning to be Geeks" who will want into your system. Here's a way that will confuse the hell out of them and still allow up to 24 machines on one Router/gateway. You have a router that has 4 connections for wired, inside the router/gateway there is a GUI which will allow you to connect upto 20 wireless connections. ( Reading the manual that comes with the Router would be the best bet) IN the manual it will give you an IP address which you place in your browser when you are connected to the Router/Gateway, hit enter and it will ask for a login, follow the directions, once inside you will have multiple ways to select through the gui to administer your router/gateway to your liking; This is in a way going through what is know as Command Line Interaface (CLI) except without the DOS prompt.

The best way to avoid having everyone else use your system is a trick I learned through experience and that is instead of using WEP and WPA for security. Use something called MAC filtering, the display fools the incoming hacker into thnking he is going up against a WEP encrypted network when in reality he isn't and the Hacker is set to waste his time attempting to break in. You will need to read up on this avenue, it should be displayed in the Manual you got with the Router/Gateway.

All Makers that I know of have many connections wirelessly beyond the physical 4 or 5 wired connections you see on the machines. Linksys WRT54G has 4 wired and 20 wireless, so does Netgear, and D-Link, others should follow the same configuration I believe. If you have an endless pocket I know of one Cisco unit that can handle 1,000 wireless connections, but $65,000 is beyond my budget.

[AMDave]

what make + model is your 4port wifi modem?

[drezha]

Many thanks Nflight.

I have a belkin router. I'll have a play at home and see if I can find the manuals here on online manuals.

The GUI bit...thats the same as getting in to port forward right? Cos I have done that before.

Will have a play.

MAC filtering would be allowing only the MAC address of our own netowrk cards access the router right?

[AMDave]

gd gd
It sounds like an upstairs + downstrairs scenario, so don't forget to think in 3 dimensions when thinking about the arial placement and angle.

[drezha]

Sorry if it's a double post... the make is Belkin and model is F5D7630-4A

A very brief looks shows that the manuals for a wifi card and wifi extender are downstairs...the manual for the routewr will require a more thorugh look for

[Nflight]

MOre questions and more answers.

The GUI bit... Thats the same as Port Address Forwarding YES !

MAC filtering only allows the MAC addresses on each persons Network cards to access the network, no body else would have access unless you went in and entered there MAC address into the GUI.

Belkin should be the same...pm me with a model number and I will look it up!

[Nflight]

gd gd
It sounds like an upstairs + downstrairs scenario, so don't forget to think in 3 dimensions when thinking about the arial placement and angle.

Do you remember my write up about the" Dog Dish Theory" of Router Placement? I want to suggest this to Drezha

[Nflight]

wifi extender

Don't use a Wifi Extender, This will give Hackers more advantage to get into your system. If your only going to have 2 floors there should be no problem at everyone accessing the Router.

Since I don't think you belonged yet to the AMDusers yet, the DOG DISH Theory of Wireless access is just this; If you place a half moon dog dish on the table and fill it with water - now place a dog biscuit on the water, at any place in the room you can see the dog biscuit. Now remove water till there is only half full - the dog biscuit is still on the water, you can only see the biscuit if you walk closer to the edge, now remove the water completely, can you see the biscuit - NO you have to walk real close to see the biscuit which means in order to access your Router the best place to put your device is in lowest place in the residence. If you have a basement, that is best. I have mine 4 feet underground level or below the grass level as seen outside the basement window. The antenna fires signals upward as only the people in the house need access, I don't need to supply Internet access to the neighbors.

Your comments

[drezha]

Wow thanks :D

We do have a basement and it could be done...except there's no port there to get it :(

but we have one in the front room.

I was thinking of having it on the first stair case because there's a port there and it's half way up the house to get wires (I want a wired network for the max (as near as I can get) 100Mb/s :lol: to play online games etc) but if it's better to place in the bottom of the house, we can try that. :) It'll go in the front room with the media center.

That way it has 2 ceilings to clear.

Oh and if the router's been set up here at home with settings, can I start again or not? :?

[spikey_richie]

Oh and if the router's been set up here at home with settings, can I start again or not? :?

Generally when you remove the power, the unit remembers the settings for a few hours (until the backup battery gets consumed). Although, some routers have an non-volatile memory to retain your setting.

You'll need to reconfigure the router, or just go to 'restore defaults'.

[Nflight]

[quote=drezha]You'll need to reconfigure the router, or just go to 'restore defaults'.

Make sure that you set the machine to save as a default setting, do not hit the restore to default before saving or you will have to remember each person mac address number all over again. That can be time consuming, and frustrating.

[drezha]

Cheers all. Looks like it might work now :D

Just gotta get in contact with the house agents or landlord to get the ISP details if not given to us when we move in. At least I only have to spend money on cat5 cable now and not another router! :D

[Strongbow]

If you don't want Cat-5 all over the house, don't want the limitations of wireless (cold spots, security etc.) then have you thought about using the power circuit for a network?

Worth a look...
http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/default_ShopGroup.asp?ShopGroupID=61

EDIT: Another alternative would be to use just a couple of these power circuit devices - one where your DSL router is and one upstairs where you could then use cat-5 or/and wireless to go directly to each room!

[Nflight]

EDIT: Another alternative would be to use just a couple of these power circuit devices - one where your DSL router is and one upstairs where you could then use cat-5 or/and wireless to go directly to each room!

Belkins have a tremendous distance of 1800 feet transmission outside and inside of 300 feet. My suggestion to add is try and run a Cat 5 cable to the basement and then place the Router down there. This will give an added security away from those hacker wanna be's. Besides that Belkin Router has the capability of handling 64 wireless connections. NICE I want one.

[drezha]

If you don't want Cat-5 all over the house, don't want the limitations of wireless (cold spots, security etc.) then have you thought about using the power circuit for a network?


Surf the Internet and share data up to 14Mb/s transfer rates

14Mb/s? :lol: I'll stick with Cat5 please ;) It was already decided none of us care about the wires...the guy who wants wireless only wants wirelss so he can move around the house and use his laptop anywhere :roll:

[Strongbow]

14Mb/s for the little one but it's quoting 85Mb/s for the other! ...you'd be lucky to get over 18Mb/s on 802.11g in a normal sized house! Wireless is OK but when busy or has interference will contend for bandwidth and reduce accordingly, and has way more latency than cable of course!

You obviously can't beat Cat-5 if you're wanting to transfer large streams of data from system to system within your network but if you're just using it for internet access then think about how large the DSL link is going to be? 1Mb, 2Mb, 8Mb, 10Mb? - possibly a 100Mb DSL if you live in Korea, Singapore, HK etc.. and certain cities in the Nordics but in reality most Western cities are still struggling to push 20Mb out to the public at the moment so it would be fairly pointless to have 100Mb, or worse a Gig if you only want to share internet access over a small DSL pipe!

After saying all this, I have 8 systems & 2 x NAS devices running over 100Mb Ethernet and 802.11g for the 4 laptops and a couple of AirportExpress's in my house all that with only a 10Mb DSL connection! :roll: ...but there would be no difference in performance to the internet even if I had only 10Mb ethernet!

100Mb Ethernet is rarely max'd in a server environment within large enterprises feeding 100s of users so what I'm trying to say after all that waffle above is don't write off those little power circuit adapters too quickly as they are more than adequate for general home use and make it easier to place the router and hubs in different places where you actually need them rather than where you have to put them due to cable length etc. So if you want fast access between systems within the house then plug them all into a switch/hub and use one of those power circuit adapters as a gateway to your router on the different floor then the "jobs a good 'un!"

Well that's my Dime's worth done! :roll: :D

[moving fusion]

NB. I know this to be true for Linux, within Linux you can reprogram your MAC address thus allowing access to an Access Controlled network but using this form of AC is far better than nothing at all!

Something else to remember is if you and your mates are going to be using file sharing programs you will need to open certain ports on your router to allow communication with that program and that internet, however if you use DHCP then your IP addresses will change thus the ports will be pointing at the wrong IP addresses. To resolve this you can use static IP addresses and port forward the ports to the relevant IP addresses on your network.

I had some other problems with wireless, see: http://www.designersoft.co.uk/forums/forumroom/room/67-1.html

[Ototero]

That was great reading. Thanks.

I'll be checking out my ring wire on Friday.

[drezha]

Cheers all.

blackheath, we'll be streaming videos and music across the house. Mainly for the media center...we can share the music via shared folders etc so it we can listen to everyone's music where ever. :)

It's all been really helpful thanks guys.

I'll report when I move in about how it all goes :D

[Strongbow]

"Drezha get's the utility services organized for his house move..."

http://www.energyseer.com/index_files/high%20tension%20power%20lines.JPG
;) :lol:

[drezha]

Right after some talks etc...

The Belkin Router cannot be brought up to Leeds :(

So after a brief chat with the guys going, they want a cheap as chips wireless router...(as long as I get wired access, I don't really care...and I can't get THAT bad wired at cheap...can I?)

Anyhow so after a brief look, this one was looked at and currently the fave to be bought...
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/102943/

Seems to have good reviews if I update the firmware.

Also with wire...am I likely to experience any noticable slow down over a large distance? Talking 30m ish here...

[Strongbow]

It's a hell of a lot of cable but you shouldn't have any issues as Cat-5 running Ethernet can be 3 times that length (at a push!).

[Ototero]

That's a very cheap adsl/wifi/router.

Great find.

[moving fusion]

drezha, that router looks ok for the price. One thing i would say after reading the reviews is make a note of all configuration on your current router, like ADSL settings that way setting it up will be easier.

[drezha]

It's a hell of a lot of cable but you shouldn't have any issues as Cat-5 running Ethernet can be 3 times that length (at a push!).

It's a fair distance it has to cover. :lol:

I intend to put it around doors etc and I know a 15m cable wont be long enough...(Use a 7m cable here at home I think to connect me to my brother's PC and that barely reaches..and we're close... so 30m will be suffcient I hope.

moving fusion, I dont have a router at the minute and in the new house, settings would be a bit different I think anyhow so that doesn't help but thanks for the tip. I'll remember it for the future :)

Ototero, I just went to ebuyer and looked for wireless ADSL routers and that was one of the cheapest with LAN ports! :lol:

[Ototero]

I use ebuyer.com for all my computer needs.

I got my adsl/router 2 years ago, Netgear DG834G, it was the cheapest at the time.

2 firmware upgrades and it's still working brilliantly. One thing I did discover about it was that the wifi side would drop connections all time time. Once I mounted it vertically, with the arial at the top, it's been perfect ever since.

[moving fusion]

drezha, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100BASE-TX for distance, a good Cat 5 cable should pi$$ 30 meters no problem.

Ototero, did you sort out your phone line? Cat 5 makes a good replacement to your existing phone cable... I also had that router for about a year then upgraded to the 108Mbps version, the firmware seems to be far better on the older version (I still get to look after the old one).

[Ototero]

Hey Moving,

There wasn't anything wrong with my phone line, it was my ISP throttling my line because of excessive usage.

30G a month is not too much, is it :?:

I had a serious moan and bitch to them by phone (a service centre in India :mad:) and things returned to normal.

Normal for me is 1 meg download, 128 k upload. :mad:

[moving fusion]

Have a look at freedom2surf, they have a 50Gb (£23.99) limit on the 8mb service, however BT will make sure you never get anything like 8Mb. See http://www.designersoft.co.uk/forums/forumroom/room/67-1.html for details but its alot better now.

Mind you the 8Mb service from BT is still under trail, but they don't tell you that lol.

[drezha]

Right want to get myself knowing what I'm doing before I order the hardware for the setup in my house next year.

Current view of the predicted setup is as follows...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v289/drezha/Network.png

Machines in red are wired connections from the 4 port wireless router. Top right machine gets wireless access. Switch is redundant.

Realising I have a switch...(Switch/hub whatever... it's the one mentioned here...http://forums.teamphoenixrising.net/showthread.php?t=36656) I thought maybe it might be possible to have:-

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v289/drezha/Network2.png

Would this work if I used the wire from the router into the uplink port? Assuming I might have to have DCHP turned on? (Was gonna have it turned off on the router and give set IP's to each PC ie xxx.xxx.x.2, xxxx.xxxx.x.3 etc) as I thought this would allow easier port forwarding etc. Wireless signal also on for the people wanteing to use it (and was going to use MAC address filtering to allow only our PC's to access the router)

Can anyone offer suggestions? If option two works, I'll prefer to do that. Means I'll have to order 3 x 15m cables over one 30m cable mind:rolleyes:

Third option...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v289/drezha/Network3.png

My machine (the nix one) has two NIC cards. (though I believe last time I believe nix failed to recognise the onbaord netowrking and thats WHY I bought the second card...) Is it possible to bridge the connections like it is in Windows to the upstairs PC?

Which option would be
A) Easier to setup?
B) Easiest to run? Ie No or little trouble...

I prefer option 1 myself with DHCP disabled and MAC address filtering.

[Strongbow]

You'd have no problems with 1 or 2

3 depends solely on leaving that system running and allowing the user to share your connection, messy!

btw, the device you mentioned is definately a hub as it has no switching intelligence built-in (no VLANs, contention buffering etc.). Connecting it via the uplink to your router would work fine exactly as you've drawn up.

Fixed ip and MAC address registering is a perfect solution for port forwarding and security - strongly recommended!

Well done! :D

EDIT: Forgot to mention, that 2 would be the easiest to set up and run as you wouldn't have to faff around with a wireless network like you would with 1. 3 is the biggest amount of faff and is not recommended at all!

[moving fusion]

One thing to point out (to be picky) is transferring large amounts of data between the two XP machines connected using your hub would be fine (I would imagine this would be 100Mbs) however transferring large amounts of data to any other PCs when your other XP PC is transferring you will notice a big slow down as you have both PCs running off the same connection 100Mbs line.

If your top right XP machine is a laptop I would leave it wireless.

Pic 2 would be the easiest to setup and run but be aware of the above.
Pic 1 would be the way I would do it.
Pic 3 I have done before and is a pain, especially when you forget to turn the *nic PC on lol

[drezha]

The nix PC will be on 24/7 as it's my crunching machine :lol:

That slow down has been pointed out to me on another forum. :-(

But I came up with a solution....

Network 4 :P

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v289/drezha/Network4.png

The vista machine will still be a bit slow I guess wont it but then that's not to bad... I could improve that by running another cable off the hub to it but that would mean more wires than I needed really... :lol:

The wireless connection will still be enabled as it can then be used by people whereever in the house but it now takes a back seat compared to these plans .

Many thanks for the help :) Feel I've learnt from this and thats the aim I guess :D

[moving fusion]

Indeed that is the idea.

See the difference between a Hub and a Switch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_hub
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_switch

In theory a switch would be faster if you go for pic 4 but i don't think its worth buying one just for this, a hub would be fine.

[drezha]

Just as an update I got it sorted.

We're on a 1Mb NTL connection so not huge speeds but meh.. they say they'll be upping it to 2mb in September.

Silly sod bought that ADSL router up there and then wondered wwhy it didn't work.. :roll:

Finally sorted now mind. :)

[Strongbow]

I'm on NTL and got it upped to 10MB, typically I'm seeing about 15-18MB download speeds! :cool: