SCOUG-HELP Mailing List Archives

<< Previous Message << >> Next Message >>

Date:	Mon, 13 Jan 2003 10:44:14 PST8
From:	"mrakijas" <mrakijas@oco.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	<scoug-help@scoug.com >
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Re: Setting up a LAN

Content Type: text/plain

=====================================================
If you are responding to someone asking for help who
may not be a member of this list, be sure to use the
REPLY TO ALL feature of your email program.
=====================================================

Hi Harry,

I hope I can help.

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Harry Chris Motin
Reply-To: scoug-help@scoug.com
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2003 07:55:30 PST8

>Hi and HELP, HELP, HELP:
>
>I need some help in setting up my LAN. I have NEVER configured a
>computer for a LAN and that's the problem. I looked at Mike Rakijas's
>SCOUG presentation, "Networking Your House". It appears to be written
>from the viewpoint of already having at least 2 computers talking and
>working together in a network and not from the viewpoint of installing
>the network from scratch (my take on his presentation; he talks about
>testing out the installed cabling, using a known and working network
>setup between 2 computers).

I guess that wasn't quite the intention but it *was* supposed to be more focussed on cabling and physical infrastructure. I figured that once the physical infrastructure was in and basically working, there were any number of resources available to help get the software configured so that you got what you wanted out of it. For some this would be TCP/IP, others just file and print services. Personally, I wanted both (the latter with plain NetBIOS, not over TCP/IP). I'll try to make suggestions from that perspective.

>Here's my situation:
>
> 1. I've installed Ethernet cabling throughout the house. I've tested
>the installed cables for end-to-end continuity in all the wires.

The result of this should be that when you plug a patch cable into the netcard at one end and the hub/switch at the other (or crossover cable when between two machines), continuity lights should turn on showing a positive connection. I tend to favor netcards/hub/switches with these lights for quick and easy confirmation of a positive connection. You can noodle in front of a screen a long time trying to debug software when it is hardware that's your problem.

> 2. I've installed a NIC in my OS/2 computer. The driver appears to be
>installed, because I see it showing up at bootup. Also, it shows up
>under the "MPTS Network Adapters and Protocol Services" as "Configured"
>for "LAN adapters and protocols".

Even though it shows configured at the intro screen, this is not the end all. Sometimes there is a null driver in there just so one can go through installation so that the proper driver can be loaded later. Go into it anyway and see what it says. For the simple configuration just to get started, you should see your netcard driver, specifically, in the box for what is configured. Associated with that netcard driver should be at least the protocols TCP/IP and Netbios (for the example at hand) indented directly below the netcard driver. They should have zeros in front of them to signify the first logical assignment. If the protocols are not what you see, remove what you have and add them. If the netcard driver is not what you see, remove the protocols, remove the netcard driver, add the appropriate one and add the protocols again. If you had made assignments, like TCP/IP assignments, these will be kept even though it looks like you're removing them, providing the same logical assignments are kept. Save any changes.

Next, configure TCP/IP. For the time being, pick out static TCP/IP addresses for the Adam and Eve (the first two machines to establish connection) of your network, say quartets 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2. Go into the TCP/IP configuration notebook, make sure the enable interface box is checked for the 0th lan interface. Click on manual for a fixed address and put the chosen quartets, one in each notebook. In the netmask field, put 255.255.255.0. Unless you know why you need to change this, you don't need to. Save the changes and reboot.

After reboot, with both machines on and connected to a powered up hub/switch (or to each other with the crossover cable), you're ready to test the results. Go to one machine and go to a command prompt. Enter "ping 192.168.1.x" where x is the address of the other machine. You should see it report, repeatedly, the time it took the other machine to respond, most likely 0 ms for such a simple setup. The OS/2 machine will continue until you hit Ctl-C, the Win machine will quit after 5 attempts. If it doesn't work properly, you'll see the OS/2 machine report only the number of bytes it tried pinging with, I believe 56, and seem to hang. If you get the former, the rest is cake and you can follow up with configuration questions because your physical network is up and your TCP/IP is properly configured at least for this base example. If you get the latter, something is still not right and further debugging is in order. I think you should make getting to this point your objective.

> 3. Now, I want to complete the job of installing the network on my OS/2
>computer and then test it out. To test I will use a direct Ethernet
>connection to a Windose machine in another room (using a cross-over
>patch cable, temporarily attached to the other machine)

If you want the Windose machine to be the Adam or Eve of your setup, it should have similar TCP/IP configuration in its network setup. If you can assign the IP and Netmask to the installed network card as suggested above, the ping test should work from either machine.

However, I would suggest minimizing the number of variables. Are you sure you've got a proper crossover cable. Sometimes its worth having known good cables (patch or crossover) to truly narrow down the cause of any problem. Before I started fabricating my own cables, I had a couple of store bought ones on hand as a reference. Yes, there expensive relative to what you can make for yourself but it will save you a considerable amount of time.

>Can someone please instruct me as to the steps I need to take on my OS/2
>machine? Do I need to use the OS/2 installation CD-ROM and install "File
>and Print Client"? Do I need to install anything else, such as NetBIOS?
>A simple outline of the steps that I need to take would really be
>appreciated. Thank you in advance.

If you've got MPTS showing your netcard and TCP/IP logically assigned to it, that should be enough. You can do the same with Netbios but depending on the variety of Windows, there are different things that need to be done. It's just a little trickier.

>HCM

Good luck. I hope this helps.

-Rocky

________________________________________________________________
Sent via Orange County Online's WebMail System at oco.net

=====================================================

To unsubscribe from this list, send an email message
to "steward@scoug.com". In the body of the message,
put the command "unsubscribe scoug-help".

For problems, contact the list owner at
"rollin@scoug.com".

=====================================================

Return to [ 13 | January | 2003 ]

SCOUG, Warp Expo West, and Warpfest are trademarks of the Southern California OS/2 User Group. OS/2, Workplace Shell, and IBM are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.