Re: Ask EU Technical Section: Networking questions

Martin Clark wrote:
I don't often ask technical questions of EU. In fact, I can't remember if I have before, and I have struggled on my own for a bit before asking this now.

I have just added a new lapdog to my household and so needed to set up a wireless network, so that it could share the broadband connection with the main PC. I have got all that working now after phone calls to Orange and Belkin, as things weren't quite as the setting-up guide suggested.

The main computer is Windoze XP; the new lapdog is Vista. The router is a Belkin N Wireless Modem Router. Now for my two queries...

1) I have Comodo's free firewall installed on the main computer. Do I still require this with the router's defences? Do I require it on the laptop as well (it is currently using Windows semi-firewall)?

Probably not, but it would be sensible to keep it. The thing the router can't do is stop programs which have infected your PC from connecting back to base, or from hijacking your PC to attack others.

Or should it be possible to do something with the router so that a software firewall is not needed? (I seem to recall reading something about routers having hardware firewalls.)

Even if they don't (and most of them don't really), the very nature of a NAT router (Network Address Translation - allows all your local PCs to share one Internet IP address) means that it's impossible for an external threat to connect direct to your PC.

Will having a software firewall in place alongside whatever the router is doing cause things to slow down too much?

No. Not one jot.

2) How do I twiddle the network so that I can view files stored on the other computer or on an external hard drive connected to the other computer? It would be useful to be able to access and save files in one location rather than end up with some files stored on one machine and others on the other.

I have tried working through the Network Setup Wizard, which seemed to be the thing I wanted, but I still can't see this computer from the other one. Any pointers would be appreciated.

You need to set the software firewalls on each PC to allow the local network to connect to them. This is probably in a range 192.168.0.* or 192.168.1.*. I don't know the Comodo firewall but there will be a way of identifying this range as a local network which is to be trusted. The router will allow this as standard.

If you can't get it working, switch off the firewalls on each machine and try again - this will tell you if the problem is indeed with the firewalls.

I'm taking some things for granted - have you actually "shared" the drives you want to be visible? Just in case not:

On the PC with the files you want to share, find the folder you want to share and right click it; choose Properties. Click on the Share tab and enable it. You can do this for the whole drive if you want, but there is a default share of C$ enabled for each drive (D$, E$, etc) by Windows. You will need permission to open these files on the other PC so it makes life much easier if you use the same username and password on each machine. The dollar, by the way, means that you can't see the share name on the network, but can only share it if you know it.

If you can't Share the folder, you will need to enable File Sharing for the machine as a whole. I don't think this is an issue in XP, but in Vista it was assumed that you don't know what you're doing, so you have to tell Windows that you really do. You can do this in Control Panel | Network Settings in Vista, where you can enable File Sharing.

Now, on the machine where you want to read the files, open Windows Explorer and in the box at the top, type \\computername\sharename. For example, \\pc1\C$ or \\laptop\documents. You should see the other computer's files.

Sorry if you knew all that.

--
David
.

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