Problem connecting two PCs via broadband

blastman

Hi guys, I posted this in broadband already, but as it's really a more general comms issue, I thought I'd try my luck here.

I have a customer with two offices. In one office, there is a small peer-to-peer network (four or five PCs, mix of Win2K and XP Pro as the OS). The PCs are networked through a router modem which is also connected to the internet. One PC is designated the server, although it is just a peer on the network. The other office is essentially a single PC running XP connected to a router modem which is also on the internet (although there is sometimes another PC connected to this network).

Until recently, there was a connection between the two offices via a program called NetDrive that allowed the smaller office to access a shared folder on the server PC in the main office. However, I recently had to change both router modems due to hardware problems, which was fine, but I can't get the link restored between the two sites. I can't ping the smaller office external IP address from the main office, even though they are on the same subnet (first three parts of both external IPs are the same).

If someone can suggest a way to troubleshoot this, I'd be eternally grateful as it's wrecking my head at the moment. VPN was suggested as a way to connect the two networks together, but they are used to Netdrive (it allows the shared folder to appear like a normal mapped network drive on the remote side) so I'd prefer to do it their way if possible. It seems like it's just a small thing I need to enable or change, but I'm damned if I can figure out what it is.

Many thanks in advance.

Knasher

Just a few tips.
Firstly the fact that you can't ping the other side, may not be indicative of much. Alot of routers will block ping requests from the internet, for security reasons. Its usually an option in the security/firewall section of your router, and it shouldn't be a problem to disable on a temporary basis.

Secondly, although you haven't gone into alot of detail about your network setup, its a reasonable assumption that your netdrive software needs some sort of port forwarding to your server computer. You should be able to look into this on the manufacturers webpage. (A quick way to test this would be to put the server temporarily into a DMZ and seeing if it works then - then find out what ports it actually needs.)

blastman

Cheers, Knasher. I reckon ICMP blocking is probably on, all right. I'm trying to find out more about NetDrive and whether it needs ports open, but information is thin on the ground (good information, anyway) It was a Novell product that seems to have been taken over by the open source community and then abandoned. I've never come across any mention of what ports it needs. It can be configured to use HTTP or FTP (standard ports open by default, I imagine) or WebDAV (not sure what this uses exactly).