Sharing My IBB Broadband

eirman

Before Irish Broadband connected me up, I had 6 PCs connected to a 10/100 hub. (PC-1 = Wim2000 sp4 ,, PCs 2-6 = Win98se). The IBB guy connected his RJ-45 into PC-1 and everything worked fine - except of course PC-1 was disconnected from the network.

I needed to transfer some files so I disconnected IBB and reconnected the cable from the HUB. PC-1 could not be seen on the network. I tried to make a new network connection with no success. (The IBB local connection in network setup is showing as a LAN type connection in Network and Dial-Up-Connections) The five "Make new connection" options are .....

1 Dial up to a private network using phone line
2 Dial up to the internet using phone line
3 Connect to a private network through the internet
4 Accept incoming connections
5 connect directly to another computer using serial, parallel, IR ports

My first question is .... where is the option for creating a network connection to a LAN ?

My second multi-choice question is about sharing the broadband accross the network.
(I'm not interested in wireless networking)
> Should I buy a basic router without any surplus ports and connect broadband to it and then into the HUB ?
> Should I buy a basic router without any surplus ports and connect broadband to it and then into a new switch ?
> Should I buy a router with 8 ports (These seem to be hard to get - I have only seen 4 port units)

All suggestions and equipment recommendations will be greatly appreciated.

Hobbes

Buy a four port router/modem which has wireless.

I use 3 com officeconnect.

padraigf

Hobbes, he has irish broadband. A modem will do him no good whatsoever. They use their own wireless antenna with an RJ-45. Not the phone lines.
He also does not use wirless to connect his PCs to the network. Itd be a huge waste of money for him to get what you suggest.

Id say go for a basic router and plug it into your current hub to save the most money. Although that is only if you arent having any trouble with your hub at the moment, because I find them awfully slow.

If you want to change any settings just go to the properties on that local area connection, and note down any settings before you change them.


That "Local Area Connection" in network connections is the right one. You use that for connecting to your own network and to the irish broadband.

SwampThing

Someone correct me here if I'm wrong...

If I'm right, the IBB guy gave your 'Local Area Connection' (LAN) a static IP address to access the internet. If that's the case, and he only gave you one ip address, your options are limited a bit.

You could set up one machine as a proxy server. This is easier with 2 NIC's in the machine and you'll need some proxy server software - Wingate isn't bad, but I'm sure there are other free options out there.
Anyway, on NIC 1, give it the static ip address and all the other settings, from PC1 that currently working on the web.
On all the other machines, give them ip addresses in the same range - e.g. proxy machine/NIC 1 has 68.122.5.12 - well, the rest have 68.122.5.13, .14, .15 etc.
The settings for the other machines will be
ip address - 68.122.5.14
subnet mask 255.255.255.0
default gateway - ip address of NIC 2 in proxy machine.
Same goes for NIC 2 in proxy machine, except gateway is ip address of NIC 1.

Then, in the internet settigns of the other machines, set them to use a proxy server for web access, and point to NIC 2 ip address.

That's one way of doing it, maybe. Anyone else any ideas?

Ciaran500

Easiest solution would be to get a BB router. Plug the IBB modem into it, tell it the static IP and let it deal with the rest.

eirman

Thanks for all the above advice -

Does anyone know where I can get a broadband router with 8 ports ?

Mutant_Fruit

you can plug your hub into the router to get extra ports. (correct me if i'm wrong, but that should work fine).

SwampThing

Does IBB not give you one static IP address for the LAN? With Eircom & IOL, the LAN side of the network is dynamically allocated addresses, but for IBB, I think there's just one IP address for inside the router....or am I on drugs?

Ciaran500

SwampThing wrote:

Does IBB not give you one static IP address for the LAN? With Eircom & IOL, the LAN side of the network is dynamically allocated addresses, but for IBB, I think there's just one IP address for inside the router....or am I on drugs?

The lan side of any connection is automatically assigned (if you have DCHP) you just tell the router your static IP which is you public external IP.

tba

SwampThing wrote:

you'll need some proxy server software - Wingate isn't bad,

I find freeproxy very good

SwampThing

Ciaran500 wrote:

The lan side of any connection is automatically assigned (if you have DCHP) you just tell the router your static IP which is you public external IP.

Not always. We've a IBB wireless BB line in work and we were assigned a single ip address for interanl use - i.e. a proxy server. I'm not sure if this is the case for domestic IBB.

elmer

my ibb has a static ip - i configured it in my router but if you're looking for the cheapest option then it's got to be a second ethernet card for one of the pcs - you could even just use internet conneciton sharing on it

Nige