Dual Router Networking?

Okay, here's the setup. There are 3 rooms: the basement, the toyroom, and the bedroom.

NOTE: We don't have PPPOE for our DSL, though I don't know how we connect. The connection is always there and we have dynamic IP's.

The Living Room: Gateway PC with WinME. Has a 2Wire Homeportal for SBC DSL connection. This PC has nothing to do with anything, except for the internet connection. Though the PC doesn't have to be on for other PC's to access the internet.

The Toy Room: Compaq PC with WinME, and a 2Wire Wireless USB adapter which connects to the Homeportal in the living room. There is no network there.

The Bedroom: Microsoft PC with WinXP Pro. There is a DLINK router connecting the Toy Room to the bedroom. Bedroom in port #1, and Toy Room in port #2. A simple CAT-5 cable is connecting them. There are 5 total ports for a LAN, and one for a WAN.


If the 2Wire Wireless USB adapter is not present on the PC's, then everything is fine and I have shared drives from Toy Room to Bedroom.
If the USB adapter is present, then WinME on in the Toy Room states that there is a conflict with IP: 192.168.0.1, and the interface has been disabled. I am aware that this belongs to the router as I can access it from the Bedroom. With this conflict in place, I cannot access any shared drives from either PC. I have the Toy Room's extra 20GB hard drive mapped as 'V:\' on both machines. The Bedroom states that the V:\ is disconnected, and therefore..unavailable.

Now, I have never set up a network before, beyond shared drives. What must I do to network the Toy Room and the Bedroom?

Here's a few Catch 22's:
1. The Toy Room must share it's internet connection with the Bed Room.
2. The Living Room must be completely unaffected.
3. A Linux system may be added later down the road (RedHat 7.3).


Keep in mind that I haven't set-up a network before, and therefore have little knowledge in the settings and use of Windows with them. So, if possible, let me know what I've got to do...step-by-step.

Thanks for your time.

A_T

You just have to set static IP's for the routers. Thus ensuring that there are no conflicts. Both are trying to grab 198.168.1.1 or something...

And possibly manually configure gateway/DNS.

Okay, on the Toy Room PC, I changed the NIC's IP to 192.168.0.2. And now I have shared drives and everything. How do I go about sharing the internet connection and creating an actual network. Will the Home Network Setup Wizard do all of that for me?

A_T,
You know that the 192.168.x.x is an unroutable IP address. This IP address is only use for a close network. Lets start from the basic. You need to have all your machines to be in the same network IP and has to have the same subnet mask. You can check this by typing ipconfig/all on the DOS prompt. Then just use the router ip address as your gateway. before you use a static ip for your machines make sure you write down the DNS, WINS IP that your ISDN provider uses. Let me know if this works.

Basically, you start your chain like this:

internet-->modem-->router

Most internet modems have their bios set to be a DHCP server, you must turn this off. If you give me more info I will help you there (ISP and hardware). Next, you must have you router connect through the modem, which should be PPoE. This should be pretty easy to configure in your D-link.

Next, you can assign static IPS for every box in your house if you want, I just set them all to get their IPs automatically. But if you do assign manually, they all have to be on the same subnet.

For example, let's say that your router is the gateway and its ip is 192.168.1.1 and subnet 255.255.255.0. Your other boxes should follow the scheme 192.168.1.x with no two x's being the same.

Next, to have a network. If you followed the above, every computer will have internet access. Your next step is to turn off all firewalls/IDS/ and Windows Firewall. Then. make sure all your computers have unique id names and they have the same workgroup. Change this by right clicking my computer and go to computer name (you will have to restart). Next, all the files/folders you want to share must be shared. To share them, right click and go to shareing (you can figure out the rest).

Finally, access each box on the network, just type in their unique name \\name, or go just type in your workgroup name in explorer. Post again if you still need help.

Thank you all very much. I had the network up and running for a little while before something went terribly wrong in the "Toy Room". The PC is no longer in service. But it's a Compaq, so it wasn't worth much to begin with. Thanks all for your help. Mainly the thing that got me going was setting static IPs, that helped. Though I was still unable to share an internet connection. WinXP in the "Bedroom" still said there was an error after I ran the home networking wizard. So I will post again when I have a Linux box to use as a server.

Now, is there any chance of explanations on something thats...well...thought provoking? Let's say that on one machine, there are 2 hard drives. C: and D:...C: contains Windows and such, and D: is just storage. D: is shared to the entire network, but C: is off limits. How would I access that anyways from a computer within the network? Or, if I had read-only access to the C: drive, how could I get full access? If the access depends on the password, then of course, some sort of password cracker would do the trick, but I'd like to know the inner-workings behind it all, and how to do it manually, without a pre-packaged exe and things of the sort.

Once again, Thank You.

A_T