On 22/1/02 6:57 am, "Paul Berkowitz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 1/21/02 8:26 PM, "M. Tamer �zsu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> However, I don't quite understand Paul's remark about OS X won't letting me >> share the same external router. I am running a router (MacSense Pro) >> connected to my DSL modem and I have four things connected to the router: my >> printer, my wired G4, my old Lombardi, and Airport. There are three more >> machines running off the Airport right now. Of the five machines that are >> running, two are running OS X (10.1.2), one is running 9.2, one 9.1 and the >> last W2K (yes, I hate to admit it, but I have one of those too). So, OS X is >> very happy being connected to a router that it is sharing with other >> devices. > > Can they all be connected to the internet at the same time? "Router" was > probably the wrong word. I don't have my own router. But I can't connect > both my computers to each other via the internet through the same ethernet > hub. I can connect either one that way, and I can connect the two together > as a local network through the hub. A level-3 Apple tech explained to me > that without OS X Server, it was impossible to connect them via the > internet. In fact, if one is connected to the internet, I usually need to > reboot it before I can connect the two together trough the hub. It _is_ a > very cheap hub, but... Paul, you've been bamboozled by a salesman pretending to be a level 3 tech... Sure you can connect multiple machines to the internet through a single internet connection. No matter what the OS of those machines, you just need a router to do the job. That could be a router implemented in hardware, or in software. You can have a basic router, that exposes the machines on your LAN to the internet - i.e each of the machines is directly addressable from the other side of the router - or it could cloak your LAN and appear to the outside world as a single machine. The former is usually what you find in a department of a company or university, the latter is usually what you'd find at an interface between a company or individual and the internet itself. In your case you'd probably want the latter, and the buzzword you need to know is NAT - Network Address Translation. The router translates internal addresses to the single external address, and is able to send incoming return packets back to the right machine. You can buy cheap little mini-routers that do this for you. I bought one from Netgear that works well at work. You can also find this functionality built in to other network devices, for instance Apples Airport Base Station can do this for you. I've got an Alcatel ADSL modem that has built in NAT. I've also got an ISDN modem from Netopia that doubles as a NAT router. There are many other wireless and ADSL devices that can be configured to do the job, you just need to find the one that is right for you. However, the cheapest solution is to do it all in software. You can have one machine that takes care of the internet connection (e.g modem, ADSL, etc), and also runs a NAT router. This serves the other machines on your LAN. It's is a bit of a pain, as you rely on that one machine being 100 % up, and not being rebooted too often (that would kill you IP connection). There are a couple of commercial software routers for OS 9. The good news is that OS X, being based on BSD unix, has the capabilities built in. However, being unix utilities they are rather difficult to configure, though there are quite a few web sites with bits of info to help you out, and there are also one or two apps to simplify configuration. The app that many people recommend is called gNAT. The reason the Apple tech wanted you to buy OS X server is simply because Apple has bundled a fancy administration application that makes setting up the routing much easier. The actual routing functionality ships with every version of Mac OS X ! One last thing, if your internet connection is via ADSL, what do you use for your modem ? Is it an Alcatel Speed Touch, with an Ethernet connection ? If so, it might be possible to get it to do the NAT routing for you... let me know and I can point you to a site with more info. Cheers Guy -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.letterrip.com/> old-archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
