Using Two PC's

woody

Guys,

A silly question but I will power on, We have two PC's at home 1 a Laptop and 2 a Desktop.


One with Win XP and the Other Win 2000, I know how to network them together etc.

With the new UTVIP 29.99 package can I have them both networked together as my Dad and Sister are usually on the same time in the evenings. there is about 15 Feet between the PC's and so do they need a simple Crossover cable or one to be connected to the Ethernet port and the other Via a Long USB Cable..??

And is it possible to Network 2 PC's now with UTVIP or are there some restrictions..

Thanks

Robbie

bk

Originally posted by woody
Guys,

A silly question but I will power on, We have two PC's at home 1 a Laptop and 2 a Desktop.


One with Win XP and the Other Win 2000, I know how to network them together etc.

With the new UTVIP 29.99 package can I have them both networked together as my Dad and Sister are usually on the same time in the evenings. there is about 15 Feet between the PC's and so do they need a simple Crossover cable or one to be connected to the Ethernet port and the other Via a Long USB Cable..??

And is it possible to Network 2 PC's now with UTVIP or are there some restrictions..

Thanks

Robbie

Yes it is possible to use two PCs at the same time. You have a few different options to do this.

The easiest, best and most secure option IMO is to use a DSL router. These usually have a DSL modem built into them and a 4 port switch. This would allow you to connect 4 PCs (and more if you attach a switch to it) to the internet (and each other) at the same time. Such routers can be purchased from EUR105 see here for examples , some even come with wireless LAN builtin. They usually also offer firewall and other very useful features.

A cheaper but more difficult, less secure method would be to connect you DSL modem to one PC and then use Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) or the Linux equivalents on this PC to share the internet connection with the other PC over a crossover cable (or switch/hub if you got one).

The first option is far more preferable.

Mutant_Fruit

trust me, ICS is not the way to go if it can be avoided. I finally gave up on it due to unreliability. It took me hours to get it working one day, and it stayed working. But after a windows reinstall i couldn't get the f;in thing working again.

TBH, its not worth the hassle of using software, use a router.

OfflerCrocGod

I'm going to agree whole-heartily with Mutant_Fruit do not use ICS, if you can get a real hardware solution to the problem (DSLrouter/modem) go for it!, ICS is a hack.

MrPinK

I prefer the second option myself. A router is great if you're just looking for a really simple option, but I like the complete control and upgradeability that a good software router gives. How many people with hardware routers could switch to IPv6 tomorrow if they wanted to?

I've never had any problems with ICS myself, I had an XP -> XP -> Internet setup running a couple of years ago. Very easy to set up and very cheap too, just the cost of the crossover cable. A linux/bsd distro is much better suited to the task though.

Xcellor

For my set up....

I have a 10 port hub. That connects all my PCs around 6 at the moment.

Into one of the hub ports I have my DSL router. My DSL router is a static IP which assigns IPs to the other computers...

Windows automatically picks it up as an internet gateway and it all works... Nice and simple. Course if it doesn't then you just specify the IP of the router as your gateway. Either way works very well for me. Never had a problem. Even have a linux box using the Internet connection

Xcellor

bk

Originally posted by MrPinK
I prefer the second option myself. A router is great if you're just looking for a really simple option, but I like the complete control and upgradeability that a good software router gives. How many people with hardware routers could switch to IPv6 tomorrow if they wanted to?

I've never had any problems with ICS myself, I had an XP -> XP -> Internet setup running a couple of years ago. Very easy to set up and very cheap too, just the cost of the crossover cable. A linux/bsd distro is much better suited to the task though.

You use "good software router" and ICS in the same post, that is an oxymoron.

I must say I disagree with you, while yes a software router on a *nix OS (not ICS on windows, it just sucks) maybe much more configurable and you could install many other interesting things such as squid (a proxy), firewall, etc. etc. Such a setup would be quiet complicated to setup and take a great deal of time to setup, maintain and administrate securely.

It certainly wouldn't be suitable for an ordinary, non technical, person and even for techies (system admins, network admins or software engineers) it would just take too long and have little benefit over a well configured router.

The only people who should mess with software routers are people who are interested in learning and playing with networking and system admin on *nix boxes, such as the ILUG crowd and comp sci students, I assume you fall into one of those categories.

MrPinK

Originally posted by bk
It certainly wouldn't be suitable for an ordinary, non technical, person and even for techies (system admins, network admins or software engineers) it would just take too long and have little benefit over a well configured router.

Well I'm certainly not recommending that beginners go out and install FreeBSD and setup ipfw, squid, etc. but there are distros (Smoothwall and IPCop for example) that are designed for just this task, and can be setup by almost anyone. Their setup is actually almost identical to setting up a hardware router, a web interface and menus for your ADSL settings, port forwarding, VPN, etc.

joePC

Just use ICS & a Cross over cable simply and cheap there no nead to buy a router or hub or anything.

It takes about 3 minutes to set up.

Thanks joePC