New wireless router - D-Link DGL-4300 owners chime in, please!

[StarTraveller]

This is going to be a massive quoted commentary. Bear with me, hehe.

Originally Posted by Tommy44

Step 1
PC#1 TCP/IP Settings. Nothing has been touchin in the advanced tab.
IP = 192.168.0.2
Subnet = 255.255.255.0

Check!

Originally Posted by Tommy44

Step 2
PC#1 TCP/IP Settings. Nothing has been touchin in the advanced tab.
IP = 10.0.0.3
Subnet = 255.255.255.0

Assuming that you're talking about PC#2, check!

Originally Posted by Tommy44

Step 3
Login to router. I go into the WAN settings and this is what I see...

What do I enter in these boxes?

This part is your router's WAN configuration. Here you enter 10.0.0.2 as the IP Address and optionally 10.0.0.1 as the Default Gateway.

If the router really insists on having a DNS you can name a bogus Primary DNS on 10.0.0.4.

Originally Posted by Tommy44

Step 4
Configure LAN

This is the router's IP address correct? I shouldn't have to change this I think.

Check!

Originally Posted by Tommy44

I also need to go into the DHCP settings for the router and turn it off since I'm setting static addresses, right?

Not really. The manually configured clients will simply ignore the presence of a DHCP server.

Originally Posted by Tommy44

Step 5
Virtual Server
Is this setup correctly?

Check!

[Tommy44]

Step 2 should be PC#2, you are correct. I'll go back and edit it in a minute for anyone else following this thread.

Why do I have to change router's IP address to 10.0.0.2? Why would anything care what that is? If I need to log back into my router would i just type 10.0.0.2 into my Firefox address bar?

[Tommy44]

What are you doing up giving me instructions at 3AM anway?

[Gorganzola]

Cuz he couldn't get you to wake up at 3am to help him. lol. He never sleeps with a proper schedule.

[StarTraveller]

Originally Posted by Tommy44

Why are their two IP address for each end of the "wire?" For PC#1 I would go into the Network TCP/IP settings from control panel and set the static IP to be 192.168.0.2. I would do the same with PC#2 except set IP to be 10.0.0.3 and set both of their subnets to 255.255.255.0. Correct? This is all I have to do on teh computer end. Everything else is done in the router, correct? On the router I see you have labeled 192.168.0.1 AND 10.0.0.2. Why two? I must be missing something. Where do I type in these numbers? Any idea as to what the router calls them?
I'm going to throw up some screen shots to help clarify as soon as I can grab them.
I'm learning a lot already and I'd like to thank you for bearing with me on this, unless you want to give up.

Learning stuff is what it's all about.

The router is a special network device that can facilitate a link between two different networks (subnets). These home routers are fairly simple in their feature set so I'll just take a basis in that in the following (which may not be strictly correct, I'm not a network guru, but it should be correct in a broad sense).

The subnet mask that we enter is used to define the subnet that can be reached without having to use the gateway. For instance, for PC#1 we defined the subnet mask to be 255.255.255.0 and the gateway to be 192.168.0.1. This means that PC#1 can access addresses in the range 192.168.0.1 through 192.168.0.255 (the subnet it's on) without using the gateway.

When you request connection with 10.0.0.3 it determines that this address is outside of its subnet and sends the request to the gateway for further handling. The gateway in this case is your router and it maintains the link between two subnets (and thus have two network configurations - one for each subnet (LAN and WAN)). The router will determine that the address 10.0.0.3 is actually on its own WAN subnet and establish the connection on behalf of PC#1.

Suppose, just for completeness, that you request connection (from PC#1) to the address 11.22.33.44. This will be sent to the router similarly to the request for 10.0.0.3, however, the router now finds that 11.22.33.44 is outside of its subnet (10.0.0.1 - 10.0.0.255) and so it will pass on the request to its own gateway (10.0.0.1) for further handling. In our scenario it would of course be unable to find 10.0.0.1 (given that it doesn't exist, hehe) and so it would report an error at this point. It should give you an idea of what is happening though.

Going in the other direction, PC#2 is actually unable to see PC#1 - it can only see the router! However, the router will forward requests based on the rules that has been defined, e.g. requests on port 139 (public port) are to be passed on to PC#1 at 192.168.0.2 on port 139 (private port). This means that PC#2 thinks it connects to 10.0.0.2 on port 139, but in reality the connection is made with PC#1 behind the router.

[Tommy44]

Originally Posted by Gorganzola

Cuz he couldn't get you to wake up at 3am to help him. lol. He never sleeps with a proper schedule.

you're right about that!! i need my beauty rest

[StarTraveller]

Originally Posted by Tommy44

Why do I have to change router's IP address to 10.0.0.2? Why would anything care what that is? If I need to log back into my router would i just type 10.0.0.2 into my Firefox address bar?

The post just before this should clarify on the first concern.

About getting access to your router, the following is important to note. To gain access to your router you have to take into account which computer you use:

• If you use PC#2 then you must have enabled remote/Internet access (or whatever it might be named) to the router's configuration module and use the address 10.0.0.2.
  
  
• If you use PC#1 then you should be able to access the router normally on 192.168.0.1.

[StarTraveller]

Originally Posted by Gorganzola

He never sleeps with a proper schedule.

I resent that... I always sleep with a proper schedule. My entire life is laid out in the calendar on the laptop right next to my bed...

[Tommy44]

Okay, there is good news and bad news. I have successfully setup the test. According to your "Simple Test of Routing Throughput" on page 2, I have successfully completed:

Sanity Check

The Setup

Testing Connectivity
i went into the command prompt (cmd.exe from run program) and managed to ping 10.0.0.2. Then I went to do the file transfer and time, but when I go into "My Network Places) I couldn't see PC#2 from PC#1. I didn't try going from the other direction. How do I do this? Do I have to do it from the command prompt? If so, what are the commands.

We are almost there!!!

[StarTraveller]

I suspected that we might run into this problem, but I didn't want to clutter the description unnecessarily.



I think what you need to do is to enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP. I'm not entirely sure, though, but I think that's how I've solved that problem in the past.

You need to enable it on both PC#1 and PC#2.

[Tommy44]

If I enable this NetBIOS thing, would my file transfer be done in "My Network Places" just like I normally would? Will that work in both directions, PC1 to PC2 and PC2 to PC1?

[StarTraveller]

You may not be able to access the other PC directly from My Network Places, but you should be able to enter the address (e.g. \\10.0.0.3\[SHARE]) in Explorer's address bar and access it that way (the other computer will then be listed under My Network Places also).

[Tommy44]

No dice.

I am able to ping PC#2 from PC#1
cmb.jpg

but i can't get on the computer any way to tranfer anything. I opened up Windows Explorer and typed

\\10.0.0.3\[SHARE]

i also went into Firefox and typed in the same thing just in case and I wasn't able to get anywhere. I also tried My Network Places just for the heck of it and that wouldn't go either. Here's a dumb question, am I supposed to replace [SHARE] with a drive or directory name or something? The only thing I have sharing turned on is on the Shared Documents folder.

[Tommy44]

Nevermind, I figured it out. You obviously replace the [SHARE] with the folder name

I got all the data. I'll post in in a minute or two.

[Tommy44]

1. Sanity Check
Standard Settings (PC#1 and PC#2 on LAN side) with GameFuel ON

PC#1 -> PC#2
280 MB file in 32 sec

PC#2 -> PC#1
280 MB file in 35 sec


2. Testing Routing Throughput
A. PC#2 On WAN Side, PC#1 on LAN Side with GameFuel ON

PC#1 -> PC#2
280 MB file in 38 sec

PC#2 -> PC#1
280 MB file in 37 sec


B. PC#2 On WAN Side, PC#1 on LAN Side with GameFuel OFF

PC#1 -> PC#2
280 MB file in 36 sec

PC#2 -> PC#1
280 MB file in 37 sec


C. PC#2 On WAN Side, PC#1 on LAN Side with GameFuel ON

PC#1 -> PC#2
1 GB file in 134 sec

PC#2 -> PC#1
1 GB file in 134 sec


D. PC#2 On WAN Side, PC#1 on LAN Side with GameFuel OFF

PC#1 -> PC#2
1 GB file in 136 sec

PC#2 -> PC#1
1 GB file in 136 sec