Yesterday Was For Technology
Oct 22nd, 2007 by Don Ray
I spent a little time with a friend that wanted some advice on setting up a website for his English, French, and Spanish classes. That occupied a couple of hours getting him started and providing him some things to study to prepare for implementing his site.
He also had a small network and had not used an Instant Messenger and wanted to be able to do that. Getting a current IM on one PC was no problem. Both PC’s had problems with Internet Explorer. After FireFox was installed, those problems went away.
The second PC had a problem downloading a current version of MS IM. The download required that the PC be at a current maintenance level and it wasn’t. It was running Windows 98 and I doubt if it is possible to bring it up today with the required maintenance.
I also think that it may have a virus. That PC is probably a good candidate for Linux. I will talk to the individual about that, when we get the rest of his needs satisfied.
After I had completed that exercise, I decided to go to PriceSmart. While I was there, I picked up a cheap Logitech web cam to test on UBUNTU. I also have been wanting to get my PCs networked together so I could share the printer and information off the hard drives, without having to move it to a external drive and moving the drive.
I had not been successful networking in my current environment before. The C&W modem that I have, uses an Ethernet connection and functions as a router. The router is a good thing as it functions as a firewall, but it also allows C&W to insure that you don’t run more than four PCs of a single connection.
I had a switch connected to the C&W router and all my PCs had access to the Internet. I just couldn’t make them see each other. Itr may have been a simple problem, but I couldn’t solve it. In the past, I used my own router connected to the Internet, but routers typically have a local address of 192.168.1.1. That is the address that the C&W router uses. Therefore, my old router could not connect to the C&W router, because there would be two devices on the same local network with the same addresses.
I had noticed that PriceSmart was carrying a new Belkin Wireless G router. I looked the user’s manual up on the Internet and found that it used 192.168.2.1 as it’s address. Smart! No conflict with C&W’s router. I removed my switch and put in the new Belkin router and I can see all PCs on my network.
I also got the Logitech web cam running on Linux. I intended to run it with Skype, but UBUNTU didn’t include Skype on the 64 bit version. I did bring up Ekiga, which is similar software, so if anyone out there has Ekiga running on Linux, you can contact me at muskogeerabbit@ekiga.com and we will test out how good that voip software is.
Anytime I get to play with a little technology, it is a good day. Sunday was a good day.
Hi Don, you should have been able to change the ip address to work the cable & wireless router. Most devices allow you change the ip address. You just need to make sure you use a private address space like 192.168.1.1 or 10.0.0.0 etc..
But it wouldn’t have been good to have two routers on the same network. You would have had to switch the role of your router to a switch. Most home routers (linksys, netgear) allow this as well.
Hi Mike. You are right. My old Linksys had died while in storage and needed to be replaced. The Linksys used 192.168.1.1 as its local ip address. Since the C&W router uses the same, you would need to connect your PC to the Linksys and change its IP address prior to connecting it to the C&W router or you would have an addressing conflict. The Belkin comes with a default address of 192.168.2.1 and you can connect it immediately without a conflict.
I had been running a switch connected to the C&W router and the C&W router had been assigning IP addresses. C&W says they only allow up to 4 PCs per paid client.
I have never tried to connect more than 4 at one time, so I can’t verify that they had there router configured with that limitation. However in my current setup, I can configure as many as I want and C&W only sees a single connection.
Since I now have my own local network, each PC can see the other and I can share printers etc. If you can do that with just a switch connected to the C&W router, I couldn’t figure it out.
If I am still missing something or I am creating some performance problem, tell me. I am effectively running two routers, however only one is functioning as the router. If I were able to access the guts of the C&W router, I would have configured it to bridge mode, but without C&W router password, I couldn’t do that.
I would have prefered having a C&W modem that was not a router, but that is not an option.
Hi Don, as long as only 1 of your routers is assigning ip addresses then you will be fine. You shouldn’t see a performance issue with your setup. A lot of modems are routers as well. But you can disable the router option within the modem. I have never seen a modem that limits the connections. But it could be possible if C&W requests it from the manufacturer. And knowing C&W then it could be highly possible.
It sounds like you are up and running fine.
Don Ray,
It was good to chat with you on Ekiga. Unfortunately, at my end the audio had a lot of clicks and pops. I’m not sure what to do to troubleshoot that :-(.
Hi Tuxi - Your video and audio were clean. The problem is probly on my end. I will try to get a better headphone and mic. If that doesn’t fix it, then it may be C&W. My upload rate is not all that fast. My download reate is good.