Slow network

I have RR cable internet through a Motorola cable modem, hooked up to a Motorola wireless router. I have my main PC wired to the router and a wireless PCI card in the other PC. I have them networked with IPX protocol so they can each have their own bandwidth as the WinXP network wizard would not let me do it this way. Both PCs surf the net fast and get great D/L speeds as well as streams and such, but the network between the two PCs is very slow. I am not an expert in this realm, I think I got lucky doing the IPX configuration. Can anyone help, thanx in advance

 

Windows XP isn't very supportive of IPX/SPX. So the problem is most likely with that. What would be best is if you setup an internal tcp/ip network for your computers. You can keep the ipx/spx one going, but just use tcp/ip enternally with each computer and you'll get a much faster connection.

 

Sounds good, someone in another forum mentioned that also, can you give me any pointers about how I would go about that? I haven't gotten a reply from other thread yet.
:Thanx, Ray

 

Just add the tcp/ip protocols to both computers. If you setup ipx/spc you must know how to do that.

Once you have that if you have a router it'll assign the ip's manually and you're done. If there is no router just assign IP's manually.

comp 1
IP: 192.168.0.1
subnet: 255.255.255.0
default gateway: 192.168.0.1

comp 2
IP: 192.168.0.2
subnet: 255.255.255.0
default gateway: 192.168.0.1

That would be the most common setup for something like this.

 

I think I got lucky setting up the IPX protocol. My setup already looks something like that. I'll peek around a little and give it a try. Thanx for input.

 

I would like to suggest that you:
go to Explorer,
right click on "My Network Places" and select properties
You should see "Local Area Connection" followed by a description of the Network card. Right click on "Local Area Connection" and select properties again
You get a screen "Local Area Connections properties" as a title, and your network card written under there, and under there should be MS Client, and "File and Printer sharing for MICROSOFT Networks". I suspect that this might Not be there since you kicked off with IPX/SPX and MS don't consider that as one of their own.
If that is not there, you can click on install on that screen and I think it's under "Services" for you to install.
ALSO:

Another way for you to tell is to simply right click on the C: in windows explorer, go to properties, and "sharing" should be an option tab at the end. If it isn't there, or it's greyed, then you don't have this option installed as I detailed above...
Once in the Sharing screen you need to specify permissions etc, as other people here have suggested.
I presume you used the same Workgroup name for both PC's... ?

All the best, and good luck. Hope my advice helped...
Let us know what the solution was or if you have any more q's:

N.

 

Log to this page it has a lot of links to instructions to Windows Network Settings, and Sharing.

Link to: Windows Network - Installing & Sharing.

 

OK cool, thanx for the link cat5e , I've been there a few times already from reading other threads in here You seem to like it alot
Anyway, MG_Nut, I checked, and "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" is there and checked, bur MS Client is not. I'll try installing that tomorrow.
Yes, they do belong to the same Workgroup.
File transfers don't seem too bad, 2.5GB file takes about 10-15mins. I don't know how this compares, because this is kinda new to me, let me know
But that same 2.5GB file takes hours with Ghost! So I just created it locally and then transferred it with explorer as stated above, only minutes! So I think I have a problem with Ghost. But MS Backup Utility takes quite long on the network too So where I'm at is using MS Backup, breaking the backups up to keep them under 4GB, saving them locally, and then transferring them to a Shared file on the other PC.
I'm not even sure if that works when restoring, and it takes away the incremental backup option, so I have to keep doing full backups manually and then overwriting them on the other PC, a real PITA. I just wish Ghost would work on the network!
Enuff rambling, Thanx for info

 

Hello again,

Let me know if installing the MS Client works for TCP/IP between the 2 pc's.

I don't recon you're gonna get much faster on transmitting such big files through your LAN, but some programs "dither" when relying on Windows to supply info about the network, especially if its an MS prog, which will probably be expecting TCP/IP, then it gets IPX/SPX (the windows client of this is not much good, infact on a Novell network, they just replace the entire MS version of the IPX client software). NOw if you imagine for example that this MS Backupmay be transmitting one file at a time, it'll probably get thisprob on each file (A bit like transfering 100 1K files to a floppy disk - slowly slowly does it now... one at a time...)

So, the moral of all that is, once you have TCP/IP working properly, ditch IPX/SPX ASAP!!! Then windows or the software (or the network layer) won't have to choose which protocol to go with, hence less delay. Get it?

N.

 

OK, I have TCP/IP installed on both PCs. It was there already. Everything is setup as default and I'm not quite comfortable messing around with stuff in there on my own yet. I'll do some googling for it and see if I can find the right info. If anyone can tell me how to set this up, I'm open for info. Thanx for info

 

To do this, you can just go to that same screen that shows what's installed for the network stuff (ie, TCP/IP etc), and click "install" then client and you should find MS Client.
Did you already do that? If so, I will re-review whats going n...

Cheers.
N.

 

Hello MG_Nut, I could not find "MS Client" in the install menu, however the first item listed in the connection properties is "Client for Microsoft Networks". Is this what I need? If so, it was installed already as well. Both TCP/IP and Client for MS Networks are installed on both PCs. I know the IP addresses of both PCs as well as my wireless router. I have an "Alternate Configuration" tab in Client for MS Networks properties on my XP Pro PC that has the IP address of my XP HE PC, but this tab is not there in the properties of the XP HE PC. Anyway, any/all info is appreciated, thanx