On Saturday January 06, 2001, Michael A. Wosnick wrote:

> I have a curious question. I have a small network that I
> just set up at home based on D-Link HPNA2.0 phonelink
> adapters (PCI). After some fiddling around, I managed
> tonight to get the network working. I have both TCP/IP
> and NetBEUI protocols bound to each adapter (NIC and the
> dialup adapter). Client for MS Networks and of course
> File and Printer sharing are turned on. I have set up
> specific IP addresses for each computer, of the type
> 192.168.0.x
>
> When I click Network Neighborhood, each computer shows
> the list of itself and the other 3 computers on the
> network. I am easily able to move and share files across
> the network, so it is clear that the damn thing must be
> configured correctly (I presume).
>
> The curious thing is that if I drop to DOS and try to
> PING from one computer the to other, I more often than
> not get a timed out response and no ping. Computer 1 is
> able to ping computer 3, but not 2. Computer 2 is able to
> ping computer 3, but computer 3 is not able to ping
> computer 2. Neither 2 or 3 are able to ping computer 1,
> and so on. I would have thought that if the PINGing
> didn't work, then there was a problem in the network, and
> yet there it is working away.
>
> I have not yet tried to set up internet connection
> sharing on my cable modem (next step), since I wanted to
> trouble shoot this curious thing first before I add
> another layer of complexity. Plus I am concerned that if
> I can't ping reproducibly and reciprocally, then TCP/IP
> is not established properly and my internet connection
> sharing will fail.
>
> How do I reconcile the lack of PINGing with the obvious
> fact that the network is able to communicate and share
> files etc???

If you have both NetBEUI and TCP/IP installed, and your
network only works in Windows, that means there's likely
something wrong with the way your network is configured for
TCP/IP. (Windows will be using NetBEUI, if installed, as
the protocol for your LAN.)

For test purposes, give each machine an IP address manually
(if you haven't already). Keeping with convention, it would
be a good idea to use 192.168.0.1, 192.168.0.2, etc. After
all machines are re-booted, see if you can ping around,
using the 192.168.0.x addresses.

R.

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