[waterbuck]

Hi
I am getting stuck in creating a home network. My goal is to have 2 laptops easily able to access the internet, and have both be easily accessible to an old G3 Mac Tower (hidden in a closet). The closeted tower runs OSX.2.6 with 600 MB of RAM, and ultimately will be loaded up with Retrospect software to go out and back up the data files off the 2 laptops on a regular basis.


The key geographic challenges are that the airport basestation (snow version, 80211b) had to be placed in our home's center hallway, quite some distance from the G3 Tower in the closet. My wife also did not want the DSL modem sitting out in the center hall, so that too went in the closet with the G3 Tower.

The networking challenge was that with the DSL modem sitting there in the closet, we needed to get its signal to over to the Airport basestation, and we still needed to feed internet to the G3 tower. I wanted to do this in a way where the G3 tower could easily see the other machines in the house on its server browser window, which meant I wanted the Airport to serve as the router and bridge, I think

Our first go at this did not quite work. We had a phone line installed in the closet, and that went to the DSL modem, and that fed into a 5-port 10/100 switch. One patch cable came out of the switch and went into the closeted G3 tower, and another long cable was threaded by a cabling expert all the way down the hall to the airport basestation, plugging into its WAN (image of a circle on the jack) ethernet jack. With this system, the laptops received internet from the Airport basestation easily. The G3 tower could connect to the internet through the switch, but I think it basically had to run its own PPoE function, and got a separate IP address. This posed a few problems. First of all, the G3 Towers' server browser window could not readily see the 2 laptops it was supposed to back up, presumably because they were DHCP clients of the Airport basestation and hidden behind its NAT function.

Second of all, I technically had what my ISP would view as two IP addresses coming out of that internet connection, which is probably a violation of their rules.

----
I really wanted the 2 laptops and the old G3 tower all receiving internet from the same router, so that that they can all see each other easily through the "Go-->Connect to Server" window (also via Command-K).

I figured out that one painful way to address this will be to run TWO ethernet cables from the closet to that Airport Basestation, one that goes from the DSL modem into the basestation's WAN (image of a circle) ethernet jack, and then one that comes back out of the base stations LAN jack (image of 2 arrowheads). I proved this by just running an open 25 foot ethernet cable down the hallway, back to the closet. Doing this, I could make the closet tower a DHCP client of the aiport basestation, and it found the 2 laptops easily.

Does this mean I have to call back the cabling guy and have him thread a second ethernet cable to that base station?

I thought somehow one cable ought to be enough. I can only think of 2 alternatives.

One--buy a router to put in that closet. Make the aiport base station serve only as a bridge, and not a router itself. If I do this, I hope/pray that the 2 laptops and the tower can all find each other easily behind the router.


Two--run a second ethernet cord from closet to the airport basestation's LAN jack.

Three--admit that it was stupid to wire up the closet to the wireless basestation, and buy a Mac-friendly 80211.b card to put in this Mac Tower (remember, I have usb, no firewire, and my internal ports are IDE-ports!).

What confused me most was the separation of functions between the 2 jacks on the aiport. One jack (WAN) receives internet signal and allows the Airport to serve as a router. But it can't send anything back out to a wired network? The other jack can bridge to the wired network but cant receive internet signal directly. Why ever would two identical-seeming jacks have such different functions?

[ghporter]

The two jacks on the Snow base have different functions because the Snow base is such a flexible device. Unfortunately it isn't as flexible as it could be, and it isn't the ideal device for your situation-at least not by itself.

The technical solution is to insert a wired gateway router between the DSL modem and everything else. The modem goes to the WAN port on the router, the tower goes to one LAN port, and the AirPort base goes to another. That cable STILL goes to the base station's WAN port, but you configure the base as a bridge only: on the Network tab of the Admin Utility you uncheck the "Distribute IP address" box.

Now all the computers are networked together. You can share a SINGLE IP address among all three (I do that all the time at home), the laptops can roam around as their users like, and as long as you configure them properly all the computers will be able to see each other.

[waterbuck]

HI-
Are routers complicated to configure? Are some more Mac-friendly than others?
Thanks

[aaanorton]

Originally posted by waterbuck:
HI-
Are routers complicated to configure? Are some more Mac-friendly than others?
Thanks

No. Yes.
Most, if not all, routers these days are config'd via a web browser. Instead of a separate app, you just type in an address and log into the router itself. This makes them platform independent, but some play slightly nicer with Macs. The biggest example of this is AppleTalk. Most have problems with AT, but a few handle it fine. In the long-run, though, AT is not used as much anyway, and if you're running OS X, can be avoided entirely.
Can't you just move the base station into the closet with the modem? Then you could go from the modem to the ABS' WAN port and fromits LAN port to the hub/switch. The existing cable to the G3 room could be plugged into any of the hub's LAN ports and go directly to the G3's e'net port. This is the way you want it set up. The ABS would then be in front of all computers on the LAN and could distribute IPs properly.

[ChadC]

One of the problems you are running into is one that I ran into with OS X and its networking capabilities. When u go to Go -> Connect to Server to see other machines it will only look in the Subnet that you computer is in. It is possible to get around this with 3rd party programs such as Dave by Thursby Software. In any case though, I have the same type of network in my house. Two wireless laptops, One wireless PC, One wired iMac and one wired PowerMac tower that i use for backup and to hold music files etc. that all the computers use. I achieved this by connecting my modem to my Linksys BEFW11S4(wireless w/ 4 wired ports) and then hooking up everything else to the basestation. In any case... Good Luck!

-Chad

[aaanorton]

Originally posted by ChadC:
One of the problems you are running into is one that I ran into with OS X and its networking capabilities. When u go to Go -> Connect to Server to see other machines it will only look in the Subnet that you computer is in.

This is exactly how it is supposed to work. OS X's networking is very capable and easy to use.

[waterbuck]

Hi

I could not move my airport basestation nearer to the old MacTower that is going to be used to administer the home network...this reflected the need for the airport to be very centrally located in order to accomodate for the crappy signal qualities of my G4TiBook, and the reality that my wife would never let me crowd up the visible house space with a big ugly beige tower computer!!

So I turned in my D-Link switch for a D-link Router DI-604, $40 with $10 rebate.

Now the network is this.
In the closet: Phone line-->DSL modem-->router-->Old G3 Mac Tower

Router-->ethernet cord running in the attic-->airport base station (snow)

Airport serves as bridge to 2 wireless laptops, one being a G4TiBook and one being a Dell Windows Me machine.

The fact that the computers all all behind the same router successfully puts them on a single subnet and the "G3 tower in the closet" (which will be backing up the laptops) sees them easily.

Thanks for the advice.

[ghporter]

Great solution! Congratulations on a successful project, and enjoy your network!

[one]

I'm just dipping my toes in the wireless ocean, & got my PowerMac G4 working w/ an Extreme base station; next step is to get the laptops up.

Problem is, they're Wallstreets...and one is still running 9.1.

I found the IOExperts driver for wireless PC-Cards, and the card works, and the driver app sees it and sees the base-station, but nothing I've done so far gets the PBG3 logged in.

Card in question is a Netgear MA401 (the only compatible unit I could find), OS is Mac OS 9.1 (haven't tried the other PB yet).

Has anyone managed to get a combination like this to work? If so, how - and if not, why not?

[waterbuck]

Hi-
I had a G3 Wallstreet talking to my Snow 80211b base station via an Orinoco Gold card for 6 months, but it stopped working and I have been unable to resolve why it stopped.

The G3 Wallstreet was running OS8.6, incidentally.

For your situation, I would consider Orinoco, and I would certainly post your question far and wide (www.macfixit.com, macnn, apple support).

Good luck