Be Excellent To Each Other

Hey guys. I know absolutely nothing about networking. I do know how to share folders and drives, and I even managed to network into my Xbox once using a crossover cable, but that's as far as it goes.. Here is my situ.

I have two pcs within three feet of one another. One is used for my daily grind and thus all of my downloads end up there (here). The other I switch on when this one switches off and I use that for media. Thus as you can see it's a pain because I download a new south park here for example then in the evening I want to add it to my series collection on the other PC and I have no means of transferring it unless I want to use a SD card and it's painfully slow.

Now. I have a hard network card in each PC as well as a wireless one. I have connected the crossover to the hard network so that I can obtain full speed and want to share a 160gb drive I have on the media pc so I can dump stuff on there from here. What makes this hard though is I tried it before and it refused to use the network cards (wired) for it and instead used my wireless. It was so slow I gave up.

So, what I need to do is this.

Keep my wireless cards in use for the internet and tell dumb Windows to use the network cards (cabled) and talk through the network using the cable so I get top speed.

As you can see, after just spending about thirty minutes setting up this thing it's plainly refusing to use the 100 network to send these files.



If any one can help me with this I would be truly grateful. Thanks guys and gals !

Without being able to see the Network tab of Task Manager or the flashy lights (as a very first step), that's not plain to us.

Windows routing is possibly confused by your... ad-hoc topology, though it should be able to figure out and prioritise (mine does). Does it speed up (even still work) if you disable wireless (on both PCs)? Ie Are you positive it's using wireless? If so, why?

I'm not positive it's using wireless no. However I have a strong suspicion it is because those were the speeds I got before enabling either of my wired cards in bios and letting Windows install them.

I tried changing the metric values but that doesn't seem to have worked. Maybe I should reboot both and then try again..

Just look at the network tab in Task Manager. It will show you (with graphs!) how the traffic is coming and going.

If it's using the wireless, disable it, and see if they can still communicate.

Have you set up IP addresses on the wired connections? The wired connection will be a separate network to the wireless one, you can't just plug in the cable and go. You'll need to go into the network properties for the wired adaptors, and give them fixed IPs on the same subnet (but not the same subnet your wireless is using).

Eg.

If your router is 192.168.0.1, and your PCs are 192.168.0.2 and 192.168.0.3 on the wireless, then give the two PCs addresses of 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 on the wired adaptors.

Yes, making sure they're assigned static IPs (because they can't get one from the DHCP server, because they can't talk to the DHCP server) was going to be a thing. ipconfig will assist us; I meant to ask for its output in my first response. But didn't. For a reason. Or possibly no reason.

Edit: Forget this edit!

I know nothing about static IPs subnets or anything else sadly. I just disabled both wireless adapters and am now getting 50mb per sec. I enabled the wireless on here (main) and it continued to send (though it dropped to 25 mb a sec).

In a minute Ill see what happens if I re enable the card on the other one

Edit. OK now they are both on the net wirelessly and thankfully sending files at 25-30mbps Which will work..

However what will happen upon rebooting both I have no idea, but hopefully it's now auto detected the settings and will stay this way.

Hm. What wireless network standard is it? a, b, g or n? If it's 11n and saying it's >100mbps, Windows will possibly use that over a 100mbps LAN, despite it never ever being quicker that way around. Easiest thing is, what does the Network tab of Task Manager look like?

The router modem is a 02 wireless box 2 (bebox by thomson or some shit) and the cards are G (Im pretty sure of that).

I rebooted, tried to do a send and got 500k a sec. So I suppose out of desperation I am going to have to either send tiny files or disable both wireless adapters, send the files and then reenable them.

Edit. I think the reason I am getting such shitty transfer speeds accross the wireless could be down to ports being blocked in the router?

You could be correct. Windows could be seeing both and thinking "aha ! G cards are fast let's use those" but then the router is slowing the shit out of it.

Nah, 11G has a theoretical 54mbps max - I was thinking 11n which claims 150mbps or something; Windows shouldn't ever opt for that over a 100mbps wired connection.

Aye but Windows is shit

I remember when I networked to the Xbox for media center streaming from the PC.. I used an app to connect that was dos based, took the mac address of the xbox and fed in the two macs (one from my NIC and one from the xbox) and bingo bongo off it went as a SAMBA share (I have linux on the box)

And I was still using my wireless..

Editoro.. I shall try this ! Edit. No I shall not as it doesn't work and this is a Windows problem it seems. It limits the wireless speed transfers to 5mb meaning you get 1mb or less actual speeds.

John,

If you go to Control Panel->Network And Internet->Network And Sharing Center

On the left hand side, you'll then see "Change Adapter Settings". Click it.

That should bring up a screen with your network adapters on. You should see your wireless adapter there, and something calling itself a 100mb or GigE network connection. Check that the 100mb/GigE connection is enabled.

If it is, right click it and select properties. In the window that pops up, click on "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" and click properties

In the next window that pops up, change the top option to "Use the following IP address" and type in 192.168.5.1, and click OK to all the boxes.

Do the same on the other box, using the IP address 192.168.5.2.

I've chosen those purely to avoid collisions with your wireless. Hopefully that should work, although it still may not because dual-homing is shitty.

It asks for a subnet mask.. It then added...

255.255.255.0

Is that OK? Initial test seems nothing has changed but I shall reboot both computers then try again

ED. Also by doing that it auto puts on use the following DNS. I can't leave that on auto.. Do I need to put anything there?

Yeah, that's fine.

Legend !

Top stuff.

This thread is like the first 10th minutes of 2001.

Hahaha!

First smile all day.