Windows 98 networking sux!!!

[jclark]

You're absolutely right. NetBEUI is great for small networks, isn't at all slow in-and-of-itself, and does have less per-packet overhead than TCP, but the insane number of broadcasts it generates can eat up the bandwidth in a large network, and makes investing in switches over hubs virtually worthless. You can find your network in a state of constant collision, unable to let anything through. It's much better to use TCP/IP and WINS than NetBEUI when you have a large number of machines, but for a home network, NetBEUI is just fine and as quick as anything.

[EyeMaStud]

I for the life of me cannot figure out how to get my two Pc's to see eachother on the network. I am able to ping each machine from the other one but it doesn't work. I have a cable modem and a hub connecting them. I have them under the same workgroup and same subnet but still no cigar. Im about to sell my computers for a couple of Macs! Any suggestions where I might be able to get some help or can you help me? Tanx.

[Jeffbx]

If you can ping, they can see each other. What isn't working?

What addresses, subnet mask, and gateway are you using? What other protocols are running? Does each machine have a unique name? A little more info would help...

[Crunch It Now]

try this web site - its where i first learned to network 2 comps - good stuff for starting out:

http://www.homepclan.com

[jclark]

A couple suggestions.

First, put NetBEUI on both machines. Yes, it's slow, puts overhead on your network, and you've already got TCP/IP on there. Do it anyway.
Next, turn on File and Print Sharing on both machines. This is the first step to ensuring that a machine appears on the network.
Go into the Bindings tab for TCP/IP and uncheck everything. It will give you a warning, but that's OK. You're on a cable modem, on a 9x workgroup, and really don't want random people browsing your shares. I've spent plenty of time laughing at people who've had way too much personal data sitting on open shares on @Home. You don't want to find that pic of your GF to mysteriously develop a mustache, do you? Or find Amazon sending you thousands of dollars of books, charged to your CC, because you shared your C: drive and someone found your one-click shopping cookie? @Home and Roadrunner have also been known to terminate accounts for 'running a server' when netbios shares have been available over TCP/IP.
Set NetBEUI as your default protocol (in the Advanced tab for NetBEUI). Strictly speaking, this step probably isn't necessary, but it doesn't hurt.
Set up a share on each machine. This guarantees your machine will generate and answer netbios broadcasts.
Boot up and log onto one machine before booting up the other. This is to avoid master browser conflicts.
At this point, both machines should be able to see each other.

[Jeffbx]

Hey jclark - I'm not trying to be a know-it-all or anything, but netBEUI is faster and has much less overhead than IP. It's a smaller, more efficient protocol, but is, in practical use, limited to one subnet.

If you're networking 2 or 3 machines at home and don't have to worry about seeing the Internet, netBEUI is definitely the way to go.