Home Networking Problem

[Joe Sitko]

I am having a problem with setting up my home network. Here is my
setup:

#1 Computer running XP Home
#2 Computer running XP Pro
#3 Computer running XP Pro
A Belkin Wireless Access Point (Ocassionally used by a work laptop to
access the internet)
One TiVo
A Linksys Home Phone Line Router
A Linksys 5 port Workgroup Switch

Here is the way they are commected.

Cable Modem Connected to the WAN port of the router.
The home phone wiring is connected to the home phone ethernet port of
the router. (This enables the house phone wiring to act as the
ethernet cabling and computers 2 and 3 are connected to phone lines in
other parts of the house.) Again, they access the internet just fine.
The 5 port switch is connected to the lan port of the router.
Connected to the switch is computer #1, the Belkin wireless access
point, and the TiVo.

All of the computers and the TiVo all connect to the internet just
fine with no problems.

However, ......................Computer 1 cannot see computer 2 or 3.
Computers 2 & 3 can see each other but neither can see computer 1.

I suspect that I actually have 2 different networks that I need to
bridge together somehow. The linksys router WILL act as a bridge,
according to the manual, between the Home Phone Network and an
ethernet network, and...............

If I click on network connections, I see three items:

1394 Connection enabled, bridged
Local Area Network
Network Bridge (network bridge) 2 Enabled

Each computer is on the default MSHOME network naem and all protocols
are properly enabled with the correct settings for DNS, file sharing,
etc.

I check on Carey's Practically Network site and all seems correct with
my settings as far as they are explained. Carey's site doesn't have
much on network bridging.

Can anyone help me out here?

I certainly would appreciate it. This has been driving me crazy for
several months now and I need to straighten this out to keep my
sanity.

Thank you!

 

[intrepid_dw]

I don't know if this will help, and you've already indicated that your
sharing options are correct, so....probably some trivial stuff here,
but I'm not entirely sure you really have a bridging problem. Certainly
possible, but just in case...

Can PC1 ping the TiVo box? Can it ping PC2 or PC3? Or vice-versa? When
your laptop is going through the WAP, can it ping PC1 or the TiVO?

If PC1 can't ping PC2 or PC3 (or vice versa), but the Internet works,
I'd almost suspect a fat-fingered entry in a netmask or a simple
routing table problem. Everyone gets to the Internet OK because of a
default route for each node, but somewhere on the subnet there's
something awry that keeps peers on the same subnet from finding each
other. Doing a quick "route print" on each of the PC's and making sure
they're all singing from the same sheet of music might be worthwhile..

Hope that's not too simplistic, but I had a crudly similar situation on
a home network - seemed as though I couldn't get to a particular
machine, but the internet worked - discovered it was the *originating*
machine, not the destination, that had a routing table problem - it
couldn't find its own subnet. Oddly enough, it was the logs on my
firewall that helped me figure it out...

If this is completely stupid or wrong or unhelpful, my apologies in
advance...

-David