Networking help

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Mabrito

Supreme [H]ardness
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I live in a apartment complex where they have there own LAN and provide you internet service. Every room in the apartment has one ethernet jack that you can plug into. I have 3 room mates so each of there bedrooms has a ethernet jack and our living room has a ethernet jack In the living room the Xbox 360 is connected to that ethernet jack. Obviously in my room, my desktop is connected to the ethernet jack. On my desktop, I share my music folder to the 360 and printer to my other 3 room mates and this worked great up to now.

My dad gave me his old desktop and I set up Windows Server 2003 on it and connected my printer to that server. I also moved my music folder over to it. Making this switch I had to purchase a router and install that on my ethernet jack and then branch it out to my desktop and the server. Now with the NAT routing the server is behind, both the Xbox 360 and my room mates cant see the server and cant access the printer or shared music folder. What do I have to do so they can see the server?

The apartment complex doesnt use NAT(probably bad I know since every computer is now on the internet unprotected) and they give all the residents there own global IP address but all the residents are still on the same LAN and can access each others shared content if they are sharing anything. But with the introduction of the router I purchased, my roommates can't see my server. Any way to fix this?
 
Rerun your computers behind the router. Example..if the routers LAN IP is 192.168.1.1..all computers behind it should typically be 192.168.1.100, 192.168.1.101, 192.168.1.102, etc etc...so they're automatically on the same network.

Is this "Server" a domain controller? Or just a stand alone workgroup machine?
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Rerun your computers behind the router. Example..if the routers LAN IP is 192.168.1.1..all computers behind it should typically be 192.168.1.100, 192.168.1.101, 192.168.1.102, etc etc...so they're automatically on the same network.

Is this "Server" a domain controller? Or just a stand alone workgroup machine?
Click to expand...

Its just a workgroup machine. It hosting my web/mail/printer/shared folders off it and thats basically it. I have its IP set manually so DHCP doesnt change it and my foward ports get messed up. Its IP address is set at 192.168.1.2 while my desktop will be 192.168.1.100 cause thats where DHCP starts. Im just wondering if theres a way my room mates and Xbox 360 can get to the server through the apartment LAN. Or do we need to run wire throughout the apartment to each machine from the router?
 
Your apartment "LAN" sounds rather insecure. Assuming that your router has something of a firewall, I would hook up the router to one of the jacks and then have all four people's machines and the Xbox run off that - you'll probably need a switch as the router won't have that many ports.

One thing to consider would be to change the machine running Server 2003 over to a Linux ATM distribution, as some of those can do all the things you want and provide better protection features like antivirus on web and email traffic and intrusion detection/prevention as well as the firewall. It would probably be a much better use of that machine imo.
If interested, look at threads like http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1294066
 
If you have access to the termination points for the cable and don't want to keep the server in your room, then just throw the router there instead like others have said.

But if you don't have access or want to keep the server in your room with 1 wall port, then if you set up port forwarding on the router, I think it should work. You would then tell the xbox360 and your friends computers to point to the outside IP of the router, NOT the 192.168.x.x address.

I believe the ports that you need to forward to the server are: 135, 138, and 139 for file sharing. I would highly recommend getting a software firewall installed once you do this and limit the IPs that can access it.
 
Concentric said:
Your apartment "LAN" sounds rather insecure. Assuming that your router has something of a firewall, I would hook up the router to one of the jacks and then have all four people's machines and the Xbox run off that - you'll probably need a switch as the router won't have that many ports.

One thing to consider would be to change the machine running Server 2003 over to a Linux ATM distribution, as some of those can do all the things you want and provide better protection features like antivirus on web and email traffic and intrusion detection/prevention as well as the firewall. It would probably be a much better use of that machine imo.
If interested, look at threads like http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1294066
Click to expand...

^qft
 
The problem i can see with doing that is that if the apartment LAN is as open as he suggests then other people elsewhere in the building can also get to the server. That's why i suggest putting all your stuff behind some kind of security.
 
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