Home Network Connections

[Tom Lombardo]

David,

I just found out that you're a writer!  This home network problem is 
really, really frustrating for me.  I bet you could write an article for 
boneheads like me that would sell in a millisecond.  Or write a _short_ 
home networking book and have O'Rilley publish it...I would already own 
that book if it existed.  I imagine there are lots of M$ users who want 
to be Linux users, but who are frustrated (or defeated) by simple things 
like their home network.

What you wrote me below is THE ONLY mention in any of the articles, 
books or newsgroups I've read that the "IPs on different subnets" are 
supposed to be _different_.  In fact, both of the Linux books I have 
don't address networking hardly at all.  They tell you to use the 
wizards (which no one needs instructions for) and they assume that 
everything works out perfectly.  One of the books even has a quaint 
metaphor about the mailman delivering your mail, as though that's what 
you need to understand in order to get your network to work.

There are so many different terms and different settings involved that I 
am just completely confused.

If you were to write about this, I'd suggest defining what all these 
terms mean, and how they relate to each other:

SSID
bridge
Hosts (which have an IP, a name, and an alias - who knows why)
DNS
Hostname (which seems to have something to do with DNS)
network name
Domain name
Gateway
DHCP
IP Address
TCP/IP
Subnet Mask
subnet

All of these can be set differently througout the network (desktop, 
router, and laptop), and I have no clue as to how they are supposed to 
fit together - even though you have kindly sent me three emails already, 
which I'm sure would make perfect sense to someone more experienced than 
me.

The number of possible configurations seems endless, and no matter what 
I do, Konqueror gives me the "Cannont connect to host localhost" error 
message.  I have run all the wizards over and over trying to get the 
machines to do the work themselves, but to no avail.

I would make one other suggestion for this hypothetical handbook:  teach 
us how to do all of this from the command line, because one of my books 
describes linuxconf, which I don't have, and the other one assumes that 
KDE is always flawless.  I like working from the command line - I want 
to lean how to do everything from the command line.

I really appreciate your time, David - I hope that someday I can start 
helping people here, rather than just asking for help!

Peace,

Tom


David A. Bandel wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 23:36:46 -0700
> Tom Lombardo <tlombardo at caserdoo.com> wrote:
> 
> Not the info I needed.
> 
> Unless your router had the Desktop and Laptop (Wireless) interfaces
> bridged, you need different subnets on those two interfaces.
> 
>                      ------------
>                      | Internet |
>                      ------------
>                            |
>                      ------------
>                      |  Router  |
>                      ------------
>          ______________|A     |B
>         |                     |
>     ----------                |      ----------
>     | Desktop |                ------| Laptop |
>     -----------                      ----------
> 
> OK, let's assume your router connection (eth0) to the Internet is good.
> Then you have Interface A (eth1) connected to your desktop.
> You have Interface B (wlan0 or eth2) connected to your laptop.
> 
> A and B, unless you are running a bridge, must have IPs on different
> subnets:
> A:  192.168.0.1 with Destop 192.168.0.2
> B:  192.168.1.1 with Laptop 192.168.1.2
> each address above uses netmask 255.255.255.0 w/ broadcast at
> xxx.xxx.xxx.255
> 
> This also makes masquerading (SNAT) to the Internet easy:
> iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.0.0/23 -o eth0 -j SNAT
> --to-source xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
> 
> This help?
> 
> 
>>David,
>>
>>Thank you again!
>>
>>I found more about the router:
>>Channel = 6
>>WEP encryption disabled
> 
> 
> Not relevant
> 
> 
>>The laptop:
>>
>>In the Network Configuration tool the DNS tab contains this info:
>>Hostname = wireless
>>Primary DNS 192.168.2.1
>>Secondary DNS = [blank]
>>Tertiary DNS = [blank]
> 
> 
> worry about DNS later.  Get basic networking working first.
> 
> 
>>In the KDE Control Center, Network > LAN Browsing settings:
>>LISa daemon
>>	Scan these addresses 192.168.2.2/255.255.255.0
>>	Trusted addresses 192.168.2.2/255.255.255.0
>>	Broadcast network addresses 192.168.2.2/255.255.255.0
>>ResLISa daemon
>>	Trusted addresses 192.168.2.2/255.255.255.0
> 
> 
> [snip]
> 
> David A. Bandel