Having some trouble with networking - advice needed

[theonetruewill]

Originally Posted by lemonadesoda

That kind of arrogance wont get you far here mate. If your wife is such a shit hot corporate jetsetter then get her to call her IT department to come round to her house and fix what her husband cant solve. Stop trying to solve everything on a shoestring. We are talking serious security issues and serious liability risk. Your IP has been noted and sent to the NAIC.

I think this is a case of "husband defends wife." Let's leave it at that shall we
Move on.

[t_ski]

Thanks theonetruewill. It's not even that. It's only about making my network secure enough IF PHI were to be on the laptop.

I think this is going way too far. The truth is, this is about her personal laptop, and my quest to make the network secure enough to be able to use her corporate laptop at home. No PHI has been brought home, nothing has been lost. I was merely trying to improve the security enough to satisfy that requirement, but her work laptop has not been used on the wireless network. As stated before, she has a secure VPN connection that is always used to access the work servers, and there are multiple security measures on the corporate side to prevent data loss.

I ask that you go back and read the thread from the beginning and don't read into the situation any more than what was stated. The company's IT department has nothing to do with my personal network, so there is nothing for them to fix.

Lemonadesoda, I appreciate your concern, but I ask that you make some contributions to the solution, and not just wildly throw around accusations. The point was this:

if she's working on some insurance policies with your PHI on there, do you want to risk it being stolen?

if someone emails her a question about a claim or something, then it could be there.

Again, nothing has been brought home, nothing was exposed or lost.

[pt]

omg, i'm rofling hard at the last 3 or 4 posts
when it's all secure, go for it

[craigwhiteside]

hmm, have you tried disabling both firewalls, most firewalls allow the ping request but will block others, so that might be your problem.

[t_ski]

Yes, I posted that earlier in the thread. I was able to disable the firewalls and the two could see eah other's shared items. The problem I'm having right now is that both firewalls have "File and Print Sharing" enabled in the exclusions list, but they are still blocking each other.

I think the problem is from McAfee firewall being removed, and for some reason XP's firewall is not configured right. I was thinking about putting McAfee back on and seeing if that works, but I just haven't had the chance yet.

[Snipe343]

did you say the routers ip is 192.168.1.1?

[DaMulta]

system restore

[t_ski]

Originally Posted by Snipe343

did you say the routers ip is 192.168.1.1?

Yes

[Snipe343]

If your having trouble connecting to the internet on the wifes comp. change the ip of the router. Thats the default ip and is really only meant to be running one computer to avoid conflicts. I donno if it will help but it did when i did my networking. Also should let you do whatever you want with security as mine did.

[t_ski]

I could do that. So are you suggesting to change it to anything, or something more specific like 192.168.1.2?

[mrhuggles]

LOL oh man, ok in your router there should be a setting called G mode protection, enable that, also check to make sure its in mixed mode [b + g], also there is a setting to make sure that either the clients can connect to eachother, or they are set to connect to eachother only through the router forget what its called but play with it, also there is a setting that sets max associeated clients, check to make sure that that is at a high enough setting, it probably is but... oh yeah and long preamble, thats a good thing.... also you might try limiting her to b mode, honestly i have seen tons of problems when you have like say, a router with a broadcom and an atheros chip in a device, and usualy the problem is due to g only mode, and setting to mixed fixes it, mmm does she have problems on other peoples routers too?

[Darknova]

I had this problem a while ago. It was all the fault of DHCP. If you're running a small personal network you have no need for DHCP what so ever. You have 256 ip addresses to choose from. That's more than enough eh?

Give every single device a static IP address and make sure DHCP is disabled to free up the ips x.x.x.100 to x.x.x.200

I've never gotten any sort of secure network to work with DHCP properly. Maybe it's just how my network is set up, but it's nice, secure and fast, don't need much else really?

[mrhuggles]

yeah, a good router is a wonderfull thing, everything works flawlessly and does so for like ever

[t_ski]

Originally Posted by Darknova

I had this problem a while ago. It was all the fault of DHCP. If you're running a small personal network you have no need for DHCP what so ever. You have 256 ip addresses to choose from. That's more than enough eh?

Give every single device a static IP address and make sure DHCP is disabled to free up the ips x.x.x.100 to x.x.x.200

I've never gotten any sort of secure network to work with DHCP properly. Maybe it's just how my network is set up, but it's nice, secure and fast, don't need much else really?

I actually had DHCP working fine until I enabled WPA, but then it wouldn't work well. I noticed that the laptop seemed to be trying to join the network with an "out-of-range" IP address and I was getting limited or no connectivity messages. At that point I tried assigning static IP addresses, which worked fine on multiple reboots. However, the first time the machine shut down completely then powered back up, I got the same message again.

@ mrhuggles - it is in mixed mode, and I haven't seen g protected mode (just g+ mode). I also know there are enough associated clients, but I haven't seen anything on the preamble. And TBH, I haven't ever used the laptop anywhere else but at home. I've used my daughter's laptop at school and at some hotels while traveling, so there were no issues with that one.

[mrhuggles]

man, i would go ahead and get a proper router, a proper router can be cheaper to get than a new one even tho new ones suck so bad

about that g+ mode, are there any other settings? g+ doesnt sound very compatible..

besides, its already figured out for you, use logical deduction, it works without WPA [why not useing WPA2?] WPA is messing up your dhcp on the laptop... so its having a connection problem cuz the laptop has a weird chip, I'd say, revert laptop to b mode, if that doesnt help, try WPA2, if that doesnt help give WEP a try but use 5 second key rotation? :P chances are you can probably fix it tho with useing some more compatible settings, ie: stuff that isnt hardware exclusive, like broadcom has speedbooster, atheros has uh, whatever they have etc

i really hope u can get it working easily enough :?, if not and you deside to get a new router that can be pretty painless too just get the right one <3

[t_ski]

Originally Posted by Snipe343

If your having trouble connecting to the internet on the wifes comp. change the ip of the router. Thats the default ip and is really only meant to be running one computer to avoid conflicts. I donno if it will help but it did when i did my networking. Also should let you do whatever you want with security as mine did.

Well, Snipe 343 wins the award for the correct answer. I was fooling around with a new top (UPS w/ LAN card) and had to change the IP of the router to avoid a conflict with that. Suddenly, the laptop can see the PC again and I was able to print from the lappy.

Kudos to you