Home LAN connectivity

[Mr. Land]

Hi, I have kind of a weird problem with connectivity between the nodes
on my home LAN. I have 1 Windows 2003 Server (call it "2K3") acting as
domain controller and DNS server. 1 SuSE Linux box ("LIN"), and two XP
boxes ("XP1" and "XP2"). These are all hooked up to my router to share
an Internet connection...that works fine. All nodes have static
addresses. All use same mask and gateway settings.

But access between the nodes isn't symmetrical. I can't seem to access
XP2 from some other nodes. I tested this problem using Windows
Explorer by trying to look at the shares on XP2. I also experimented
with using ping, and since ping's behavior duplicates that of Explorer
in terms of the connectivity problem, I'll use its behavior to try to
describe what's happening:

Pinging XP2 from 2K3 works
XP2 from XP1 fails
XP2 from LIN fails
XP2 from XP2 works

All other combinations work. I also tried using IP addresses instead
of node names, and got the same results. What would cause my second XP
machine to be unreachable, but only from certain other nodes?

Thanks.

 

[Malke]

Hi, I have kind of a weird problem with connectivity between the nodes
on my home LAN. I have 1 Windows 2003 Server (call it "2K3") acting
as
domain controller and DNS server. 1 SuSE Linux box ("LIN"), and two
XP
boxes ("XP1" and "XP2"). These are all hooked up to my router to
share
an Internet connection...that works fine. All nodes have static
addresses. All use same mask and gateway settings.

But access between the nodes isn't symmetrical. I can't seem to
access
XP2 from some other nodes. I tested this problem using Windows
Explorer by trying to look at the shares on XP2. I also experimented
with using ping, and since ping's behavior duplicates that of Explorer
in terms of the connectivity problem, I'll use its behavior to try to
describe what's happening:

Pinging XP2 from 2K3 works
XP2 from XP1 fails
XP2 from LIN fails
XP2 from XP2 works

All other combinations work. I also tried using IP addresses instead
of node names, and got the same results. What would cause my second
XP machine to be unreachable, but only from certain other nodes?

Thanks.

It sounds like some of the XP machines have a misconfigured firewall in
place. Since you have a fairly complex network, it will probably be
good for you to go through this network troubleshooter by MVP Hans
Georg Michna:

http://www.michna.com/kb/wxnet.htm

I assume you are running Samba on SuSE and have the SuSE firewall also
configured correctly.

Malke

 

[Malke]

Hi, thanks.

Any other ideas? This problem remains...

Thanks.

What were the results of Mr. Michna's troubleshooter?

Malke