John Galea's Home Lan Page

Last updated 7/29/98.

So why would you want to set up a LAN in your home? Many reasons, first of all it is cheap. All you need is two very inexpensive Ethernet cards, a little bit of coax cable, 2 T connectors and two terminators. If you want to spend more money you could use wireless lan cards which would allow you wireless roaming in your home. Personally I am a little concerned with the high frequencies these card use (from a health perspective).

Windows 95 has all the software you need built in. Now that said Microsoft had the idea in mind when this software was designed that all LANs would have knowledgeable administrators to handle any anomalies. Of course in your home all you have is ... well you!

So what can you do:

This is VERY powerful and convenient. Rather than pay for peripherals for each machine why not share them!

Play multi player games

Let's get this one out of the way first. A number of games such as Duke Nukem3D, Quake etc allow users to play multi-player games through the network. These often use a protocol called IPX. To install IPX click My computer, Control panel, Network. If IPX is not installed on your Network card select Add, Protocol, Microsoft, IPX. Each of the games start networking games there own way, but for Duke Nukem3d as an example run setup from the Duke Nukem directory running under Win95. Since Win95 is providing the networking you will need to run it under Win95. Next select Network games, last select start Duke. The game will scan the network for other Duke3D games running IPX.

Drive and printer sharing

Once your ethernet card is installed and all conflicts resolved (sorry no way am I going to try and go into every possible fix/problem here) you are ready to start. Ethernet is very simple, run a peice of coax between the two machines, use a T at each machine and place a terminator on the other section of the T. Yes you must have a terminator at each end of the wire. No you can not get away with leaving them off even on very short wires.

You will need to understand what is called a protocol. A protocol can be best thought of as a path between the two computers that then uses the network cards connected. The protocol for drive and printer sharing is called NETBIOS or NETBEUI. To check and see if this is installed go to My computer, Control panel, Network. Look to see if NETBEUI is installed for the network card you have installed. Note that there is a network setting for each network adapted installed in your machine. This includes the dial up networking adapted installed for your modem.

Installing NETBEUI

To install the NETBEUI if it is not there pick on Add, Protocol, Microsoft, NETBEUI. Next pick on the Identification tab and select a unique name for each machine. Next pick on File and Print sharing on the Configuration tab. Select I want to be able to give access to files and printers as desired. You will also need the Client for Microsoft Networks. If this needs to be add click on Add, Client, Microsoft, Client for Microsoft Networks.

Adding Share

Once installed and rebooted you are ready to create shares. From any drive, or directory including ZIP drives, CDROMs and you hard disk from inside My computer or from Windows Explorer push the right mouse button. A selection for sharing should appear. Simply click on sharing and then define your share, name and security.

Printer Sharing

From My computer, click on Printers, right mouse button on top of the printer and select share, set your share name and security.

As the french say ... Le Voila.

Using the share

From the other machine to get at the share you can do it one of many ways:

Connecting to the Shares using Network Neighborhood

Double pick on Network Neighborhood (on your desktop assuming you did not delete it) and then find the name of the other computer. If this does not work, you have made an error in your NETBEUI install check it out. Each machine that is sharing should be listed here, including the machine you are on (if it is sharing anything). Double pick on the machine and the shares for that machine will be presented.

Connecting to the Shares from a DOS prompt

DOS network sharing command are actually very simple, just type 
net use x: \\server\sharename
where x: is the drive letter you want to call the share. For printers simply ignore the drive letter. To delete a share just type 
net use x: /d
for delete.

Connecting to the Shares using Windows Explorer

From Windows Explorer pick on tools Map a network drive and then type 
\\server\sharename
as the path. You can manually select the drive letter and you can tell Windows to reconnect to these at logon.

Connecting to Printer shares

The easiest way to do this is to click on My computer, Printers. Click on Add a printer, pick on next, select network printer, type 
\\server\sharename
as the path. Then manually select the printer or have disk to install the drivers for this printer.

Sharing Modems

Sharing modems is a little more difficult. There are a lot of different programs out there to do this, I have played with and got working is called NPCOMM. This program uses TCPIP as the protocol to pass the modem between the machines.

Installing TCPIP

You first will need to get TCPIP installed and functioning. This is a little tricky. Click on My computer, Control panel, Networking. Look to see if TCPIP is installed under the network adapter you are using. If not select Add, Protocol, Microsoft, TCPIP. Pick on TCPIP for the network adapter and then select Properties. Select Specify an IP address and choose a unique address for each machine. For example type 192.0.0.1 (the one indicated in the help file for NPCOMM. Next type 255.255.255.0 for your subnet mask. Leave everything else blank, no DNS (domain name server), no Gateway, No WINS. Reboot the machine.

Private IP Ranges

In the range of IPs a couple of ranges have been dedicated to private use. If you were to choose a manual range of IPs that actually existed on the real internet this would cause problems. So these private IP ranges are used for internal networks. There are two of these (maybe more). 192.x.x.x and 10.x.x.x. You can freely use these ranges in any private network. These ranges are also used by internet connection devices such as Microsoft Internet Connection Service or by routers. More below about routers.

Checking TCPIP

To see if TCPIP is up and ready to try NPCOMM go to a DOS command prompt and type 
ping 192.0.0.1
or whatever the address you chose for the other machine. You should get a response if all is working well. If not check settings above.

Installing NPCOMM

The help file for NPCOMM helps some on this, but I will see if I can help clarify a little. I will try and get the author of NPCOMM to consider adding some of this to the help file. Conceptually NPCOMM is very simple, run portserv on the machine with the modem, and run NPCOMM on the machine you want to use the modem on. What this creates is a virtual COM port. To find out the COM number pick on the icon in the tray. While having this virtual COM port is helpful programs that make use of Windows Modems will need one extra step. Click on My computer, Control panel, Modems. Click on Add, then pick on Don't detect and then next. Manually select the modem that is in the other machine, or use the diskette shipped with the modem. Lastly select the COM port number assigned by NPCOMM. Of course this assumes NPCOMM is running.

Selecting the Server with the modem

Pick on the NPCOMM icon in the track, then select PortShare setting. Type in the IP number such as 192.0.0.1 in the Remote Host Name and select the COM port on the server that the modem is attached to. To test the TCPIP setting pick on the Pinger box (added in Version 1.12). You should receive a OK message if all is well. To find the COM port that the modem is set to on the server, click on My Computer (on the server), Control panel, Modems. Pick on the modem and select Properties, and look for the port number.

Now any program that uses Win95 modems will see this modem as if it is in your machine through the magic of the network.

Sharing cable modems

Sharing cable modems is a little more complicated, but not much. I had heard horror stories about sharing cable modems, but it really is not that bad. Let is start with some basic terms. First server as I define it here is the machine that has the cable modem. Client is the machine that wants to use the cable modem remotely.

Why might you want to share cable modem?

Lots of reasons, more than one machine in the home, or perhaps you want to defer the cost of cable modem by sharing with your neighbor or someone in your home.

Options for sharing an Internet connection

There are many different ways you can share an internet connection. There are programs such as Wingate (and others) which will do it for you. Microsoft in it's wisdomhas included what they call Internet Connection Sharing and has built this into Windows 98 Second edition and Milenium, as Well as Windows 2000 pro and Server, and now Windows XP. Additionally there are devices called routers that have come onto the market that are terrific little devices for very little money.

Microsoft Internet Connection Sharing

ICS is a very simple feature that Microsoft as built in that works well within limitations. There is not ability to configure of change anything what so ever in ICS so if you find something that does not work for you, tough! Personally I had difficulty getting Netmeeting Audio working from behind ICS. To turn on ICS it is simple. From Network and Dialup Connections right click ontop of the network interface card that has the connection to the cable modem (or DSL) and click properties. Click on the sharing tab, and then click enable. This will set your second NIC (you need two nics in the machine to do this) to 192.168.0.1 which is the default for the server. ICS provides a Mini DHCP, and DNS as well as the routing features. You can in server load full DHCP and DNS on top of ICS and then you get all the featuresand configurability of DNS and DHCP. Works well. The mini DHCP and DNS from ICS turn themselves off leaving the routing feature working flawlessly.

NAT in Windows 2000 Server

In addition to ICS described above Microsoft also included the ability to do NAT (Network Address Translation) in Windows 2000. Using this you can add Full DNS, Full DHCP and have complete configurability of your network. You can choose your internal address range (unlike ICS) and there are some configurations you can do with NAT.
To enable use simply (disable ICS if your had enabled it) then go into Routing and Remote Access and configure the server, then choose Internet Connection Server and then choose setup a NAT protocol. You will need to then manually configure the IP of the adapter(s) you want to share on.

Routers

Most of the network companies such as Dlink, Linksys, and SMC have products in the router area. All with slightly different features.

How does Wingate work

I am going to describe how Wingate works. Not to say Wingate is the best, it is just simply the one that I have tried. Wingate works very simply. You download and install the code (ya bet that one you could not have figured out on your own). Wingate allows free use for one user and then various charges for additional users. I must commend the help files in Wingate. While not verbose or self explanatory they helped me enough to get it going in a reasonable period of time. I am a little more web literate so I thought some people might benefit from some additional explanation.

The rest of this section assumes that you already have TCPIP up and running. I have a section above that will help with that. My setup uses two ethernet card. One talks to the cable modem and the others serves the network in the rest of my house. This is the best way in my opinion to set this up. The reason for this is that it allows you to control the protocols handled by each of the network adapters. If you were to use only one network adapter and you also wanted to share stuff inside your home then you would have to enable NETBEUI on the ethernet card that is connected to the cable modem. This could inadvertently share out stuff out the cable modem to the rest of the net. Not a great idea. It would be an invitation to hackers. Additionally setup of the system with multiple network adapters is a little easier. The configuration of the second adapter is far less critical since you do not have the cable modem to contend with.

Once you have installed Wingate it runs a program that loads during Windows boot. If you use multi user support no one actually has to be logged on for the sharing to work. A very nice design point. Wingate acts as a gateway for the client. You simply need to tell it the protocols you need to support on the client. If you are literate in the protocols this is not a problem. If you are not then I'll try and help.

Warning

You should be careful not to install DHCP support. Or at least the cable modem service that I have which is Cogeco. According to Cogeco you will bring the entire network down if you enable this. DHCP is a protocol whereby the PC gets a dynamic address from the server which in this case is your internet service provider.

Procotols

The various protocols are needed to support each of the very different ways that different classes of programs communicate. The most obvious one is the browser. This is called http. Next up is email. Most email programs work based on a series of two protocols. One is called POP3 and is used for receiving mail. The other is called SMTP and is used for sending mail. This is from the perspective of the client. Next up is called Proxy and socks and is used by other programs that need a path to the network. It is likely that you will need one or the other, and maybe both. Might as well put both. Last two that are left are called telnet and ftp. These are less common than the rest. Especially telnet. Telnet is used to get a command prompt interface on a remote host. This is sometimes called a shell account. Most people do not use telnet. FTP on the other hand (which stands for file transfer program) is used to upload and download programs from servers on the net when they are not served up by a Web interface.

I hope this helped explain some of the protocols a little. If you need to change the protocols or configurations on the server after install you simply start Gatekeeper the program that configures Wingate.

Client End

Do not install Wingate on the client machine. If you have then simply un install it.

Once you have the server end running the client side is actually very simple. You tell each program that you are using the internet with to go to the server as the gateway to the net. This is called proxy, or socks. Wingate have provided a nice little utility to help with this. It is called wg2util and does the configuration of the browser, and email programs for you. The one thing that I found that did not properly get setup is the browser. On Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 there are two settings you need to change. To get to them select View, then Internet Options. Select the connection tab. You will need to change the tick box from connect to the internet using a modem to connect to the internet using a local area network. In addition you will need to insure that access the internet using a proxy is ticked. By the way, you can change between using the cable modem and using a modem simply by changing these two settings manually. I have a laptop and need to do this.

Microsoft Internet Connection sharing.

Windows 98 and Windows 2000 include Internet connection sharing. This is dead easy to enable. Press Start, Settings, Control panel, Network, then right click on top of the network card conncted to the internet and click on enable internet connection sharing. This works well for most internet apps but some will not work so well. The ones that don't work well include:

Port forwarding

To fix some of the problems mentioned above you can use a program to port forward these requests past your ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) machine to any machine on your internal network. You can get a program called portmapper from Analogx. Using this program requires you to know what ports are used by the program you are trying to use. Also, since you are creating a path from the internet to one of your machines you can only use this port to/from this one machine you define. So what this means is that if you port forward to enable netmeeting for example then only one machine is going to be able to use netmeeting.

Common Ports

Telnet server23
FTP server21
WWW server80
SMTP server25
POP3110
Microsoft terminal server3389
Citrix terminal server1494
VNC5900
VNC Web5800
Microsoft VPNUDP 500 and
TCP 1723
Netmeeting1503

Port forwarding IRC

MIRC can be port forwarded to allow it to be used from behind ICS. By default it uses ports 1024-5000 for DCC. DCC is used to send, receive and chat. Port forwarding this number of potrs can be done but is not practical. So you can change MIRC to use a couple of ports and then forward these. These can be changed by selecting File, Options, DCC, Options then DCC ports.
You will also need to tell MIRC rather than to lookup the IP of the machine to hand out the IP of the ICS machine. These can be changed by selecting File, Options, Connect, Local Info. Here change the IP address to the IP address of the ICS machine. Also you need to turn off "On connect always get" Local host and also turn off IP address.

Terminal Server

There are numerous remote control software that allow you to control the desktop of a machine through the internet. These include programs like VNC Norton Anywhere Laplink and others. All of these programs have a number of limitations. They are: Terminal server is very different. It creates a remote session on the server rather than just pass the desktop of the machine. You can have numerous sessions at the same time. Terminal server is much lighter from a processor point of view on the server. Additionally it seems to send less data than remote desktop software. Once you get more than one person logged on at a time Terminal server starts to like a lot of memory. A single session requires very little additional memory or processor power over being logged on locally. I have terminal server running on a Pentium III using Microsoft and Citrix Terminal server on about 192 MB of memory. It performs well on one and two sessions but starts swapping out (needs more memory) when you get more sessions than this.
Both Microsoft and Citrix Terminal server are well behaved TCP apps and can easily be passed through a socks server and can easily be port forwarded. (See above for the port numbers).
Citrix and Microsoft terminal server can co-exist on the same server.

Microsoft Terminal Server

Windows 2000 server includes a product called Hydra which is Microsoft Terminal server. This product works very well. It is very easy to install and configure. Microsoft has done an excellent job!

Citrix Metaframe terminal server

Citrix offer a competing product to Microsoft. It is very easy to install and also works very well. Of the two Microsoft's product seems smoother. Citrix has a number features not found in Microsoft's product: Be sure to checkout my page on Spyware to insure you secure your machine from hackers.
Well that's it for now, till the next time I play!


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