WinXP networking wizard.....

[bnzzh]

ok. what im planning to do is: connect 2 comp together for gaming.
i have a crossover cable and 2 nic's. 1 comp has XP-home and other has XP-pro

my questions are:

does it matter what option i choose? when the wizard says, "select the statement that best discribes this computer".

the XP-home has 1 nic and that's connected to a cat5 to a router for internet access. question is, would i have internet connection when i switch to the regular cat5 then have connection with the other comp with the crossover cable?

if i enable NetBIOS do i have to go and install NetBEUI?
oh and when i enable netbios, it seems that i cant connect to the internet thru the router. so i have to toggle options everytime i wanna connect to other comp and internet?

how do i install NetBEUI?

thats it for now, thanks in advance.

[neouser99]

You won't need a crossover cable if you plan on having both computers plugged into the router. All they have to do is have an active IP, usually 192.168.x.x. After that, most games can autoconfigure LAN setups. Just make sure that both computers firewalls are turned off. You won't need them anyway, as they aren't as good as the routers firewall, most likely (don't take my word for it, your router might not have a firewall, most consumer routers though do).

-neo

[bnzzh]

You won't need a crossover cable if you plan on having both computers plugged into the router. All they have to do is have an active IP, usually 192.168.x.x. After that, most games can autoconfigure LAN setups. Just make sure that both computers firewalls are turned off. You won't need them anyway, as they aren't as good as the routers firewall, most likely (don't take my word for it, your router might not have a firewall, most consumer routers though do).

-neo

hey thanks.
but the thing is, the router is only for broadband. its not a networking thingie.
no hub. its just a basic broadband router to have mutiple comps use the cable internet. i just wanna set up the crossover cables.

[neouser99]

By being a router, and if multiple computers can hook up to it (called a switch), that is all you need for the networking. I have never done the crossover thing, so I am not much help there :(. I would just try hooking them all to the router and setting up the lan game from there, and connecting. Just make sure the firewalls are off on the computers, not the router, so that other computers on the LAN can see it.

-neo

[glc]

If your router has more than one port for connecting computers, it's also a network switch.

To establish a local network when both computers already have Internet access through the router, you choose OTHER in the wizard - then "this computer is directly connected to the Internet" - and turn OFF the XP firewall, in spite of its dire warning.

[piasabird]

why not connect them both to the router/switch?

That provides a more stable setup.

[neouser99]

and turn OFF the XP firewall, in spite of its dire warning.

ONLY do this if you know that your router has a NAT firewall...if it doesn't, it is advised that you leave this on or suffer the consequences. You should be ok, because most consumer routers have the firewalls in place, but I have seen a couple that do NOT have one, so you must be careful.

-neo

[glc]

In order to fileshare, you have to kill the XP firewall. ALL routers use NAT, but some go a bit farther and use stateful packet inspection too.

[piasabird]

When you use a Router like you buy for home networking, which is what I use you set up the Internet access to your ISP on your router setup routine. The default for networking is usually to use DHCP. Then you use regular Cat 5 cables and attach to the switch side of the router from your PC's NIC card or integrated NIC port.

All I do is tell Windows Networking wizard "I connect to the Internet through my attached LAN.", and that works just fine. The defaust share location is the My Documents Folder. It may prompt you for a password for the share. It is up to you if you want to use the default location and/or password.

Here is a good site for networking:

www.homenethelp.com