Creating a small netowrk within a large network

  • Thread starter Thread starter susantha silva
  • Start date Start date
S

susantha silva

Hi All,

One of my client wants to create a small network to connect 4 computers
(server will be a xp pro machine) within a large office network. She has
been given one ip address from the office which will connect to the office
network and internet. She wants to give this ip to one of her windows xp
machine and let other 3 machines connect to it and access internet and also
the shares in that machine. The problem is I'm not sure how to config this
one. The office it people already give her internal ip and a external ip
along with subnet mask and the dns server ips. But I'm clueless how to
config this one. Anybody have an option or solution for this?
 
Two Ethernet adapters, one for the main office net and one to feed a 3 (or
more commonly, 4-) port hub or switch. Then configure Internet Connection
Sharing on the card connecting to the main net. The three clients will pick
up an IP address in the 192.168.*.* range. If you can find a 3-port
Ethernet card, you can dump the hub/switch. You could also use a wireless
access point and three client wireless adapters.
 
Philip's approach is sound, but I tend to prefer using a router rather than
ICS, a switch, and multiple NICs. To do this,
- Connect the Uplink port on the router to the office network.
- Configure the WAN side of the router to use the IP address you were given
and for the default gateway and DNS of their Internet connection.
- For the LAN side configuration you can generally use the defaults - allow
DHCP etc.
- Connect your 3 machines to the LAN ports of the router.

I've use this type of setup quite a few times for small business clients
where it is necessary to segregate networks but provide shared Internet
connectivity (e.g. when there are multiple tenants in a small office
building on shared wiring).
 
Yep I did a search and both of you guys are corerct and I think as
mentionedbt GTS router method is very clean and less troublesome because
even if the server is down still other two computers can get into the
internet and access e-mail (which is very important to them) and share
files with each other. So in the router do I've to disable the firewall?
this is because, if that office having a hardware or software firewall. I
need to verify this one also because I might have to travel to to custoemr
side and config this in tommorow. I really don't want to do any mess with
their network.

thank you,
Susantha
 
You're welcome.
It's a little hard to generalize without more info about the front end
firewall and your requirements, but here's some thoughts -
The "firewall" in inexpensive routers often refers to the fact of NAT
routing (rather than a true firewall with stateful packet inspection for
example) and you there wouldn't be anything to disable there. If the router
has a more sophisticated firewall and it's behind another firewall it
probably would be best to disable it.

If you need to forward ports for something like Remote Desktop it can get a
tricky with multiple routers and firewalls involved, but if you're dealing
with general Internet access and Email I suspect things will go smoothly.
--
 
Back
Top