Peer-to-Peer Network

Anykey Index | Peer-To-Peer Network

Hi everyone. My name is Tom and I've been asked to write about the networking project I recently completed. My goal was to connect two computers and use both on the Internet, using both to chat in #Parentskitchen so my wife, Carolmana, and I could both play games there at the same time.

The first thing I did was to get two network cards (which I got at a second hand computer store for $5.00 each) and a RG-56 cable to connect them. The computer store employees said that the RG-56 type cable was a lot more stable than coax cable and if I were to add more machines later it's easier to do with RG-56. They also suggested a hub, but said that with just two machines it would work peer-to-peer.

The next project was to identify the cards jumper settings, if I would have gotten plug-n-play this would not be necessary but I'd need the setup program. After a couple days surfing on the net I located a picture of the cards with the jumpers labeled and they matched. In Windows 95 Control Panel >> Network, I added the cards as NE2000 compatible under Add>> adapter >> Novell\Anthem. After the card was installed I had to change the properties to the correct i/o address and IRQ interrupt.

At this point I could have celebrated, but despite the fact that both machines said the network was there, they didn't see each other. After a lot of reading an ohmmeter to check the cable, I discovered the cable was a straight through cable and what I needed was a crossover cable (where the receive and transmit wires are crossed). We exchanged the cables and it worked for file and printer sharing.

Now for the next part, I went back to the web for programs. I settled for Wingate, a program from http://www.wingate.net/. Wingate seemed to have the best help file and the site offered a lot of help. The machine with the modem is the only one you install Wingate on. During install, the program asks for computer names and DNS numbers for the Wingate machine. It also asks for your preferred IRC server, for which I entered Carolmana's favorite, Polaris.StarChat.Net, the home of #parentskitchen and #parentsroom, and I accepted the defaults for most of the rest. It was necessary to go back to Settings to change the properties of the card in TCP/IP->NE2000 Compatible IP address to what was suggested 192.168.0.1 and Subnet Mask to 255.255.255.0 . Doing this gives your card one address and the modem get it's address from your ISP.

Then came the client machine (the one you want to add net). I needed to change the IP address of the card to 192.168.0.2 and Subnet Mask to 255.255.255.0 . I also need to write a Hosts file for the Windows directory containing Wingate 192.168.0.1 Client 192.168.0.2.

Then came the programs. We use Netscape 3.01, so in Netscape I went to options >> network preference >> proxies >> Manual Proxy Configuration and typed in under HTTP Proxy Wingate Port 80 and closed then re-opened Netscape. We now had two machines to surf with.

I couldn't get MIRC to connect to the server, so I shut down for the night. The next day Carolmana went to #Parentskitchen but was denied entry with an open socks server error. No matter what she did she wasn't able to get in; not even through Java Chat. I told her to shut off Wingate and once she did, she got right in. So now the problem was when Wingate was on, we could surf but couldn't chat on StarChat. I did more surfing and experimenting with other chat nets. I discovered that the socks server in Wingate needed to be bound to a specific address, so I set my adapter card at 192.168.0.1 .

We could now chat on the Wingate computer but still not on the client machine. The next step was to setup MIRC. In setup I added a new server named Wingate IRC; Server 192.168.0.1; Port 6667. Then in Gatekeeper (the Wingate front end) I went into Services IRC Mapping accept connections on port 6667 bind to specific interface 192.168.0.1 the net card and enable default mapping to Polaris.StarChat.Net .

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