Network Setup....

[iftiq]

Hello all,

I've just recently moved into some serviced apartments and because we're only here for about a few months there's not much point in getting an ADSL line hooked up (besides, I don't think we'd be allowed to anyways). The building does however have broadband access although I'm not entirely sure how it works/ what it is.

Basically there's a network cable that we were told is for the internet and I plugged it into my wireless router (Netgear DG834PN) and after some tweaking got internet access from my various computers. However, this doesn't strike me as being the most secure configuration, since now when I check the attached devices tab in the router settings I can see about two dozen other machines, whereas when we were at our old place and the router was connected by ADSL I could only see our machines. Also in "My Network Places" I can see workgroups other than my own- which leads me to believe the same is true of people living in other flats in this building. Also my router seems to lose any control of IP addressing (I used to be able to set it to assign addresses statically and within a given range) but now regardless of what I put in these option my computers get other addresses. I can however still set the router address.

Basically what I want to be able to do is to have our network work like it used to. I tried to to this by subnetting (a new concept to me) but it resulted in not being able to reach the internet and I also had to assign IP addresses manually on each computer....

Right now my router has IP address 192.168.113.100 my various computers have addresses like 192.168.113.xxx. The subnet is 255.255.255.0 and the default gateway is 192.168.113.0. Ideally what I'd like is to have say the range 192.168.113.100-106 reserved for only my computers and then to make sure that only computers connected to my wireless access point can see and share my resources. Right now I can see various other workgroups that aren't connected by my access point.

I hope the above has made sense. I'm quite a novice at networking and have proceeded mostly by guessing and checking.

Please help,

Thanks,

[arthurleung]

I think you are being connected to a building-wide network (Typical of a student hall of residence). And you are using your router as a switch rather than a router.

Depends on how the building's administrator set it, you can see the other computers in the LAN.

To secure it, you plug the cable from the wall socket to the router's WAN socket. The router should be set to DHCP and obtain IP/subnet/gateway from the building's router.

If your router's WAN side is getting IP like 192.168.113.123, make sure your router's LAN side IP is set to something in a different subnet, i.e. 192.168.1.1.

Then you connect your laptop/desktop through wireless or wired port.

Turn on the NAT on your router, and it should work.

Depends on if you want to use DHCP for your machines or not, enable the DHCP in your router (LAN side), and allocate from 192.168.1.2 to may be 192.168.1.20.

You can't force 192.168.113.100~106 for yourself because the IP allocation is decided by the DHCP server "upstream", i.e. your building's router.

[Jay]

hmm

if this has been setup wrong then they could see your systems.

I would check up on this.

If they have set it up wrong make sure all your accounts have passwords. Did you use the WAN port on your router?

[Sinizter]

If you really want to separate your network out, then install a linux router.

[iftiq]

I don't think I have a WAN port on my router. Its a Netgear DG834PN (Combined ADSL Modem, Router, Wireless Access Point) and it has 4 ethernet ports and one telephone socket for the ADSL line. I've just stuck the network cable into one of the ethernet ports.

When I try to change the router IP to 192.168.1.1 and then have it DHCP from say 192.168.1.2-10 two things happen my computers when set to automatically get an IP end up with addresses like 192.168.113.xxx (exactly as they were before) and I can't connect to the internet. I manually set my computers address to 192.168.1.10 and I was able to connect to the router but still no internet.

Is the link for the router...
http://www.netgear.co.uk/wireless_mo...er_dg834pn.php

[Sinizter]

that router will work as a switch or as a router. It wont be able to take an ethernet connection and then act as a router for that.

You need a router for a cable connection - they dont have built in modems and accept a network connection as the incoming connection.