Techie question

[plonq]

We recently purchased a wireless router to replace the pocket router/access point that we've been using for our notebook computers.  I have come up with a plan on how to wire the lot up, but I have a question about how XP and the network will function if I wire it that way, and I was hoping that some of you folk could chime in (since most of you are more tech-savvy than I am).

The way we have them wired right now is interesting, but not that unusual.  We have both computers directly wired together with a CAT5e crossover cable, giving us 1GB file and printer sharing across an IPX network.  Both computers also have a 100MB TCP/IP wired connection to a router, with the file/print sharing disabled.  We have a pocket router configured as a secure wireless access point plugged into the router, which allows our notebook computers to connect to the internet with their onboard wireless LAN.

The way that I am thinking of wiring it is very similar with only a couple of small, but significant changes.  I'm going to leave the crossover connection untouched, but I am planning to enable file and printer sharing on the TCP/IP connections to the new wireless router.  The idea is to give our notebooks access to the file library and printer on our home network.  This is a bit less secure than our configuration above, but the router has a hardware firewall, and we have software firewalls running on all four machines, so my thinking is that if I put fairly secure password protection on the connection then we should be reasonably safe.

I've done up a visual representation of the current and proposed networks below.

The question: Is there a way to instruct Windows that it should only share files on the desktop systems across the 1GB connection?  Does it have a preset order in which it will cycle through network connections in order to choose the ones it needs (e.g., by network card ID, connection number, network type - IPX vs TCP/IP - etc.)?  Is there a different way to wire this up in order to make the question moot?  (With the assumption that we'll still have a 1GB connection between our desktops at the end of the day.)

Comments

[giza.livejournal.com]

The real question is: Does your router do Network Address Translation (NAT)? If so, you won't have to worry about the outside world getting in, since all of the addresses on your network would be "non-routeable".

[plonq.livejournal.com]

It's more the speed than the security that I'm worried about. I'm just going to run some before/after tests when I wire it up and see what happens.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Unless you have something like an OC-3 as your WAN connection, or you're doing an insane amount of port forwarding, your border router will NOT be the bottleneck.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

It's not the WAN speed that I'm concerned about; it's the speed of the file sharing that I have between the computers on a 1GB connecion that I'd concerned with.

My current configuration:

100mb connection (via router) to the internet (TCP/IP)
1000mb connection (via crossover cable) for file and printer sharing. (IPX)

The new configuration I'm looking at:

100mb connection (via router) for file/printer/internet (TCP/IP)
1000mb connection (via crossovef cable) for file and printer sharing. (IPX)

My question for the new world is: if I have file/print sharing enabled on both connections, what will happen if I drag a file on my computer into a folder on atara's computer. Will it go via the 100mb connection, or the 1000mb connection?

[gedrean.livejournal.com]

I should think you should be able to get a wireless router whose LAN ports are GbE ports, so as to make to the IPX network unnecessary.
After that, wirelessly set up the laptops using WPA2 (pretty decently secure).

As far as forcing Windows to say "Share like this over this port and like this over that port" I don't know. Is your laser printer a USB only or does it work with Ethernet? If so, connect it to your router, it'll be easier.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

None of the places we looked offered routers with GbE ports - and to be honest, it wasn't something that I even considered until confronted with the connundrum later.

[hantamouse.livejournal.com]

I know how to tell TCP how to get places, where it should go first, and what it can go do with itself, but IPX - I don't know how they work together.

Do you actually get Gb speeds out of the crossover cable? I've never gotten mine above 100.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I haven't done any speed tests, but subjectively it feels much faster than it did when we had a 100mb connection between the machines.

[neverville.livejournal.com]

Staples overprices Cat5 cables immensely, one mistake I won't make again...

[plonq.livejournal.com]

True. Staples has decent prices on some things, but staples ain't among them.

It's nice having a Staples near where I work so that I can wander up there when I get bored on my lunch break, but the last real purchase I made there was a (slightly overpriced) red Swingline stapler.