HELP!!! I need some advice with setting up a Home test lab.

[KingLouie3]

Chaps,

I need some help in setting up a home test lab.

I have a server with a dual Intel pro 1000 NIC card and a workstation with two nics. I just recently purchased a Netgear 5-port Gigabit switch (GS605) for the home lab.
The lan address I have chosen is 192.168.1.0 for the lab. The switch is connected to Netgear DG384GT router, as well as the second nic from the workstation.

I have installed Windows 2003 standard server, with an ip address of 192.168.1.1 and set the default gateway address to the server address.

However, I cannot ping the router which is 192.168.0.1.

Have I missed something out?? Do I need to purchase another router? I'm setting up this home lab to start studying for my MCSE 2003 exams. I'm not off to a good start.

Any help and assistance will be appreciated.

Thanks.

[TiG]

what have you set the netmask to?. if you've set it to 255.255.255.0 then you've got it wrong, you need to set it to 255.255.0.0

TiG

[kidzer]

I might be a bit thick, but im struggling to work out your network topology...


Anyways, the first thing I notice are the 2 IP addresses are on different networks, being 192.168.1.0 and 192.168.0.0, unless there is a device that can route frames between different networks then they wont be able to communicate.

I shall re-read and try and work out your topology, I feel a bit silly about not being able to!

[KingLouie3]

I have used subnet mask 255.255.255.0 for both networks.

192.168.0.0 - is the network id of NetGear DG384GT router which is connected to BT Broadband.

192.168.1.0 - is the network id for the planned home lab.

Hope this helps!

Thanks

[mycarsavw]

I might be a bit thick, but im struggling to work out your network topology...


Anyways, the first thing I notice are the 2 IP addresses are on different networks, being 192.168.1.0 and 192.168.0.0, unless there is a device that can route frames between different networks then they wont be able to communicate.

I shall re-read and try and work out your topology, I feel a bit silly about not being able to!

Nope, you seem to have it correct, the OP is using mixed IP address networks

EDIT:

KingLouie3 I thought the default DG834GT router IP is 192.168.0.1 - at least it is on mine

[KingLouie3]

I might be a bit thick, but im struggling to work out your network topology...


Anyways, the first thing I notice are the 2 IP addresses are on different networks, being 192.168.1.0 and 192.168.0.0, unless there is a device that can route frames between different networks then they wont be able to communicate.

I shall re-read and try and work out your topology, I feel a bit silly about not being able to!

Thanks mate, really appreciate your assistance.
Let me know if you need more details.

[KingLouie3]

Nope, you seem to have it correct, the OP is using mixed IP address networks

EDIT:

KingLouie3 I thought the default DG834GT router IP is 192.168.0.1 - at least it is on mine

You are right, it is the default router IP.

What is OP??

[TiG]

How do you expect the networks to communicate with a netmask of 255.255.255.0 and them being on different subnets?.

you understand what i'm talking about?.

what you are doing is restricting where the traffic is going.

with a subnet of 255.255.255.0 you are only going to allow
192.168.1.0 to 192.168.1.255

meaning you can't get to 192.168.0.1

hence you need to use 255.255.0.0

TiG

[young_one]

Or you could just move the router to 192.168.1.xxx (I like to use 250) and remember to disable DCHP and DNS on the router during the same reboot. Then set that as the gateway or set it as the dns lookup outside of the network and set it as the second gateway (lower priority than the 2003 box) in your DCHP settings.

The alternative is that since you have setup the Windows 2003 box as current DCHP gateway, which could be fine, except you havent turned on routing and remote access feature on the 2003 box. In theory you could get the 2003 box to route between the two different subnets except the basic method microsoft implemented to do this through wizards will enable NAT and so (assuming your router also uses NAT) will create a double NAT solution which can cause trouble for some applications and protocols (SIP based VOIP springs to mind i.e. Skype and Vontage).

Or you could just do as above and change the subnet to 255.255.0.0, except it might not be that simple since, as my first solution, you will still need to disable the routers DCHP and DNS at the same reboot as changing the subnet and if you arent 100% you know how to get it back (not hard) assuming something is wrong then it will take a factory reset.

Edit:

I shall re-read and try and work out your topology, I feel a bit silly about not being able to!

Me too a little.

In thinking about it, I assume kinglouie3 has the gigabit switch plugged into one Intel NIC (192.168.1.1) and the router into the other (so 192.168.0.xxx - assigned by DCHP) and he is wondering why the server isnt routing between them. If that is the case then starting the Routing and Remote access wizard as mentioned above will do the job, but again I mention that double NAT isnt a good solution. It will both increase latency and cause other problems.

[mycarsavw]

You are right, it is the default router IP.

What is OP??

If the router is using its factory set default IP address then it should be 192.168.0.1 and not 192.168.1.0.

OP - Original Poster - you!

Personally, I'd do a mixture of the last two suggestions. Sorting the netmask out first to see if that changes anything.

[KingLouie3]

Chaps,

I used the subnet mask that Tig suggested and it worked. I could ping the server (192.168.1.1) from a workstation (192.168.0.10).

However, I made an error in buying the gigabit switch.
I'm going to get hold of another router, hopefully from Ebay, and start to get my head around networking.

Thanks to everyone for the help and advice!!

[TiG]

Glad it worked, and you are going about things the right way, you'll only learn by doing.

TiG

[kidzer]

Very true, and given what you've read here (mainly from TiG's post), you can probably work out the basics of subnetting now aswell

Enjoy networking-related stuff, I sure do!