helpa n00b network his network

[Q80Thug]

:bye: need some assistance por favor.....

i have decided to upgrade our home network and also make a assembly point for the three major devices i have in planned , the assembly point is all done and taken care of. however im having difficulty making the network since its my first time doing such thing. the sad thing is that i should know how to do this since im partly a computer engineer but looks like snoozing in the data networking class finally caught up to me. so here's a diagram of my NEW design:
http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/6831/copyofhomenetwrokdesignsl0.th.jpg (http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=copyofhomenetwrokdesignsl0.jpg)

info:
the OLD setup was basically the Wnet router connected to a siemens access point and then they were several siemens access points wokring as repeaters to cover the entire house. the Wnet router has DHCP server enabled and WEP security also.


im still not sure whether to run the security and the DHCP services on either the Wnet or the linksys. also, im not sure how to configure the access points to connect to the new linksys router.
i know it is possible to set static IPs for certain devices and im thinking to reserve an IP for the NSD. im i doing the right thing or reserving is not necessary at all?

any thoughts guys ? thanks :flowers::snuggle:

[spankme]

i make it a habit of setting up my network with both static and dhcp addresses

for instance:
using 255.255.255.0 for subnet mask

i place my routers/servers/accesspoints/voip/dboxes etc from
192.168.x.1 - 192.168.x.10
192.168.x.11 - 192.168.x.15 for PCs
then i enable dhcp in the range from 192.168.x.16 - 192.168.x.25 for laptops and testing PCs

this set up makes it easy to have shares and do port forwarding for the devices that are 'always on' (or rebooted rarely) and also saves me the hassle of having to assign static IPs to boxes that may only be on the network for a few hours

too bad you dont have a print server, rather then having to run your HP Printer from the Dell

[Dymond]

Q80 Well you could probably get away with making the WNET your DHCP server but at that point your turning your Linksys into a glorified switch, in fact a switch would work perfectly fine there. The access points should be easy to configure, I always think of them as wireless switches, the only configuration I would do on them would be to set up your WEP encryption to all your wireless devices. I'm assuming your going to put half your devices on one AP and the other on the other AP? I guess you must be a fan of wireless to desktop machines but I can tell you from experience its a pain in the ass. I would try getting those on a wired switch if I had the way to do it.

As for dynamic vs static IP I think your OK with your first idea, Make the Storage Device static but the rest are probably fine to be dynamic. I'm also assuming this is all going to be peer to peer?

[Q80Thug]

um.... yeah !


lol, there is a particular reason why i said help a n00b. i know what you are saying but somehow i cant comprehend it. :hidey:

well my intention is to run the DHCP on the linksys and also making static IPs to all devices in the house including the external drive. the reason why we invested heavily on wireless is for practical reasons. our house is 4 floors and they are 10 computers in which 6 of them are laptops. also, our residential area has very bad connection due to very old copper land line wires so we are using Wnet, which is basically a cellular broadband router. i'll try configuring the Access points today but going through the linksys setup i couldnt figure how to add the static IPs :mad: i will edit this post later to show you some snapshots of the linksys setup.

[Dymond]

I nabbed the manual for the Linksys..

Wait...

*slaps head*
You actually do the Static IP at the machine level. You just assign it an IP on the same subnet as the rest of the network. I know with some routers you can lock in IPs by the MAC Address of the card in the machine but I'm not seeing that functionality in your router.

I'm too lazy to do a FAQ but here is a good one on how to do it:

Windows XP: hotComm FAQ: Assign Static IP Address (Windows XP) (http://www.hotcomm.com/FAQ/FAQ_staticIPXP.asp)

Windows Vista: How assign a static IP address on Windows Vista (http://hubpages.com/hub/How-assign-a-static-IP-address-on-Windows-Vista)

The only downside is the lappys.. If you force your wireless card to a certain IP you may have a hard time getting those machines on another wireless network thats not yours, especially since most wireless networks use DHCP to assign IPs.

[Q80Thug]

So after a long time of procrastination i have managed to complete my home network. you can clearly see that i 'fudged it' due to my laziness. but hey at least its working :bonk:

http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/7717/mynetworkre7.th.jpg (http://img359.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mynetworkre7.jpg)http://img359.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)

hopefully i will later conclude this thread by posting a picture of my assmbly board where i gather the top three devices on one pegged board (an idea from a post on lifehacker.com ):thumbs:

[Dymond]

Its honestly a scaled up version of what I am doing here at the house. I just have one WAP and no SAN.

[Q80Thug]

Yay! my home network project is complete!

q80thug's latest slideshow on Flickr (http://flickr.com/photos/20983195@N07/show/)

i guess this concludes this thread :D enjoy