Any networking gurus on right now?

If so, please chime in, I have a question for yas. I don't wanna type the whole thing out if there isn't anyone who can help. LOL

A little rusty, since I was laid off 5 months ago, but I'll give it a shot. What do you have?

State O.S. and the type of network. If it's TCP/IP related I might be able to help.

ask away.

No, really!

I have 2 computers (laptop and desktop - XP home) I'm using a linksys router that's connected to the desktop and a linksys wireless card for the laptop.
How can my laptop gain access to the printer that's connected to the desktop?

The wireless and the wired client, that is. If so, then it's all a matter of sharing the printer on the wired desktop through the printer settings in control panel. In other words, it sounds like a connection, a clear path, exists between the wireless laptop and the wired desktop. If that's the case, then you just need to make the appropriate sharing settings on the desktop and point the laptop at it. The desktop would then be performing another role as a print server, among the other things that it does. It receives print requests from your laptop and sends them to your printer.

You should be able to right-click on the printer (on the desktop machine) and select "Sharing...". Share the printer. Then, on the laptop, go to your Add Printer wizard and choose a Network Printer, then browse to find the printer from your desktop machine.

XP has a home networking wizard built-in that's supposed to make this pretty painless, too.

I followed your directions but ran into a glitch when choosing the printer from my laptop. The name I chose for the desktop network is not in my list of options. :shrug:

I'll go back and start over.

In the absence of the formal question, here are a few answers anyway:

-No, you can't bridge the Internet.
-Network neighborhood will not be functional across routers unless you're running WINS.
-No, the router isn't adding routes to your Unix host's routing table. Check the RIP settings on the Unix box.
-It's telco's fault, no matter what they tell you, 9 times of 10.
-Advertising SAP will not improve network performance.
-And finally, the firewall won't advertise a route out the same interface from which it received the request.

OK, so probably none of those answered your question; I'm just practicing. :)

Yesterday morning, I woke up to no internet connection. Reset my router (MSFT MN-500 Wireless Base Station) and still no-go. Base station monitoring tool says connection to internet and internal network is fine. If I bypass my router and connect my modem directly to my PC, my internet connection is fine. Anyway, after much wrangling, I had a tech support guy (from India) tell me they've received tons of calls from my area with the same problem. Said the problem is with Cox Cable and not MSFT.

So, I call Cox. During the call, everything starts working. There was an automated message about a temp outage in my area, and while I was on hold, my connection was restored. (Now, you gotta remember, my connection was never really gone, it just didn't work through my router.)

This morning, I wake up to the same thing. No internet connection, but I can access the internet by bypassing my router. So, I call Cox again. No automated message this time. I get one of their tech support guys on the phone, and he tells me they're having the same problem. People with routers are unable to connect to the internet via the router, but can bypass the router. He said everything is fine on their end and the problem is with the routers. I ask him if the calls they're getting are from people with a specific type of router. He says "No." I ask him if it makes sense that EVERYONE in the area with a router (different brands) would be having the same problem at the same time, and it NOT be COX's fault. He acted like I was being an asshole and said, "well I can ping ya, so it must be your router." I say, "well when you were having the same problem yesterday morning, what did you do to fix it." He says they didn't do anything. He's so full of shit.

So, network gurus, what gives? What would cause a problem like this. I'm a programmer, not a network guy. :)

For whatever political/corporate reasons, Cox doesn't want home networks connected, rather, just a single PC. Don't ask me why, but some Einsteins out there have decided in their infinite wisdom that they only want one connection per high-speed line.

IF this is the case, they probably filter by MAC addresses, aka hardware addresses, aka burned-in addresses. The first few hex characters of each MAC address identify the manufacturer of the network interface card (NIC). Each Ethernet interface on a router is a separate NIC, as is the network card in your computer. So let's say, hypothetically, that Linksys routers are identified with 50FF as the preamble to their MAC addresses. Therefore, all MAC's that start with 50FF are known to be Linksys routers. (note: I'm assuming that the MAC's for Linksys network devices are numbered differently than MAC's for Linksys PC-based network cards, else this theory goes out the window). Anyway, in this case, the ISP would filter out MAC addresses that correspond to network devices, and only allow MAC addresses that corresponded to PC-based NIC's.

Solution: most routers will allow you to change the MAC address. You'd want to change the address of the "outside" or "WAN" or "Cable" interface, the one facing your ISP, in other words. Change it to the MAC address of your PC. In this way, if the problem is MAC-filter-related, the ISP's equipment will have no way of knowing that your router is not your PC. Some routers even have a "copy MAC address from PC function built-in.

Also, note that you won't have any routing problems, because MAC addresses are locally-significant. The MAC address possibly being filtered by your ISP is only considered by the first-hop router (at your ISP, probably, but sometimes the cable modem itself if it isn't acting as a bridge) and the "outside" of your router. The fact that your PC has the same MAC address will have no bearing on this. That address will be converted to an IP address on its way out, and I'm sure your router does NAT as well. But you can also change the MAC on your PC if it makes you feel better.

You will want to clear the ARP cache on all devices after making the changes. The procedure varies by machine, so a reboot of all devices is the surefire way to do this.

The problem could be something else entirely, but this would be the first thing I'd try.

Good luck.

with your assessment. :) My cable company was pulling the same crap...