Question about setting trusted zone in ZA free for home networking.

I have a desktop and a laptop both going through a Linksys wireless g router.

I'm trying to network them together, and I can see both the desktop and the laptop, from the desktop. However, I can't see either from the laptop. It says that access is denied. So I went into ZA on my desktop, in order to set a trusted zone for sharing.

Here's where I get confused...In ZA firewall, you have to enter an IP address for the something that wants to get throught the ZA firewall. But...doesn't my laptop (connected wirelessly) get a new IP address assigned everytime that I start it up and connect to the router?? And if I enter an IP range...How do I know what range to enter...and what about the fact that ANYTHING in that range can slip through the firewall...meaning something other than my other computer!?!?!?


Roger

 

Hey rogvalcox,
With the router in front of your private network, there is an external IP address that the internet communicates with your router. That comes from your ISP. Once the traffic goes through the router, the router translates the external address to an internal address.
Linksys uses the range starting with 196.168.x.x for internal addresses. On my network, the additional addresses start at 192.168.1.100 with 50 clients possible. (You can find this on the initial router set up page.) So I could set the range from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.149. Your range should be pretty much the same if you have left most of the default settings on that first page alone. (My router is 192.168.1.1 so I have to include that address.)
Anyone else with those IP addresses are also on private networks that have their internal addresses changed to a different external address once they go past their router, so you do not have to worry about the IP address from that standpoint.
Here's a link to probably a better explanation of procedure -

http://www.ezlan.net/faq.html

Go to the "How I set my software Firewall" question about halfway down.
Hope that helps.