Wednesday, August 18, 2010

LAN Networking - Win7 + Vista + XP?

I am trying to create a LAN network between multiple home computers.


I continually receive messages such as ';limited or no connectivity';. I am fairly good with computers, but Networking is my weak point. As I understood, there are certain ';rules'; about networking such as Cannot have same IP addresses, but can you explain the following:


1) What is the purpose of the Subnet Mask?


2) What is the purpose of the Default Gateway?


3) Can you please give an example of a manually configured setup. (IP address ';range';, Subnet Mask, Gateway[s], etc.)


4) Any further information will be appreciated.





To connect the computers, I am using an Ethernet Switch.


I prefer doing things manually because I learn better by doing it that way, but I know there is another method (control pannel %26gt; networking %26gt; set up new connection), but am not sure how this works.


Also, one of the computers is running Win7, another is Vista, the others are XP. Might this cause an issue?





Thanks in advance.LAN Networking - Win7 + Vista + XP?
1) The subnet mask tells your IP stack how big the local network is, so it will know when to send a packet locally and when to use the router. In a home network it is almost always 255.255.255.0. which tells the stack that any address that has the same first three numbers is local, and anything else goes to the router.





2) The gateway (router) is the path to the internet. It's where IP sends any packet that is outside the mask. By convention it is usually the lowest or highest address in your local range, but it doesn't have to be.





3. The most common home network puts the router at 192.168.0.1 and assigns addresses to the hosts in the range 192.168.0... 2 to 254, with a mask of 255.255.255.0.





4. The DNS is where the ';phone book'; that converts names to addresses is. It's the same on all hosts and you have to get the information from your ISP.





Private networks use 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x address ranges because they have been reserved for that use. The router knows to never route those ranges.

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