Peer to peer limitations on XP home/ pro

[Larry T]

If I have a peer to peer network set up through a switch
with 8 xp pro pc's and 2 xp home pc's will the 5 machine
networking limit apply to the xp home machines if they
are really only accessing one of the xp pro machines that
is acting as a server?

If one of the 10 connections at a switch is a wireless
access point does it count as just 1 of the 10 connection
limit for xp pro or is it the actual number of machines
accessing the wireless access point that count toward the
10 machine max for the network?

 

[Ed Woods]

Its how many users are accessing the share. Windows XP can be used as a file
server for upto 10 users simultaneously. You can also allow the xp machine
to do authentication which works well. You will need ntfs enabled and setup
user and passowrds for users or groups.

GL

 

[Dodo]

As far as I know, there is no networking limit associated with Home or Pro.
A limitation would exist with the DHCP allocator on the ICS host machine. An
ICS host can only assign IP addresses within the 192.168.0.0/24 scope. This
limits ICS clients to 253. Any ICS client assigned an IP address within the
scope counts as one of the 253.

Wireless clients probably recieve a DHCP configuration from the ICS host and
would therefore each count as one.

It's unclear what you mean when you say 'acting as a server'.

It sounds like you're referring to ICS and not file sharing.

I've heard rumors concerning ICS limitations, but I've never found
documentation. Anyone claiming an ICS client limit other than DHCP
limitations, please provide a link.

 

[Knoj]

As far as I know, there is no networking limit associated with Home or
Pro. A limitation would exist with the DHCP allocator on the ICS host
machine. An ICS host can only assign IP addresses within the
192.168.0.0/24 scope. This limits ICS clients to 253. Any ICS client
assigned an IP address within the scope counts as one of the 253.

Wireless clients probably recieve a DHCP configuration from the ICS
host and would therefore each count as one.

It's unclear what you mean when you say 'acting as a server'.

It sounds like you're referring to ICS and not file sharing.

I've heard rumors concerning ICS limitations, but I've never found
documentation. Anyone claiming an ICS client limit other than DHCP
limitations, please provide a link.

XP home has a 5 inbound connection limit where as pro has a 10
connection limit. However, this only affects current connections. As
one connection halts it opens space for a new connection. For example if
you have 10 computers all running xp home and 9 of them want to copy the
same document off of the same system, then only 5 can connect at a time.
If the "host" machine is running XP pro then they they can all connect
at the same time.

According to MS this limit is not optional ie we can't change it.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314882

 

[Knoj]

If I have a peer to peer network set up through a switch
with 8 xp pro pc's and 2 xp home pc's will the 5 machine
networking limit apply to the xp home machines if they
are really only accessing one of the xp pro machines that
is acting as a server?

If one of the 10 connections at a switch is a wireless
access point does it count as just 1 of the 10 connection
limit for xp pro or is it the actual number of machines
accessing the wireless access point that count toward the
10 machine max for the network?

You are correct, Home has 5 inbound connections and Pro has 10. However
these are concurrent limits. Even though your systems are networked
together they aren't always creating inbound connections to each other.
Most likely the only time that you will see this is if more than 5 of your
machines are trying to connect to a file or printer on one of your XP Home
machines at the exact same moment. For most people with a home network this
most likely will never occur. Although I do wish MS hadn't imposed the
arbitrary limit, or atleast let end user's change this number.

I hope that helped, if not check out MS article about inbound connections.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314882

 

[Steve Winograd [MVP]]

If I have a peer to peer network set up through a switch
with 8 xp pro pc's and 2 xp home pc's will the 5 machine
networking limit apply to the xp home machines if they
are really only accessing one of the xp pro machines that
is acting as a server?

If one of the 10 connections at a switch is a wireless
access point does it count as just 1 of the 10 connection
limit for xp pro or is it the actual number of machines
accessing the wireless access point that count toward the
10 machine max for the network?

There's no limit to the number of computers that can network with
Windows XP.

XP Home Edition allows a maximum of 5 other computers to connect to
its shared resources (disks, folders, printers) simultaneously. XP
Professional allows a maximum of 10 other computers to connect to its
shared resources simultaneously. A wireless access point doesn't
count against the limit. Computers that aren't actively connected to
a computer's shared resources don't count against the limit. When a
computer disconnects from a shared resource, it no longer counts
against the limit. See this site for more information:

Inbound Connections Limit in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314882

--
Best Wishes,
Steve Winograd, MS-MVP (Windows Networking)

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