Network help

[Wonko the Sane]

I have 3 computers at home, all running Windows XP Home. I've connected them all to a D-Link DI-604 Router.

All three can access the internet just fine - the problem I am having is with filesharing. When I try to map a network drive, the response is very slow and not all computers on the network are visible. If I do happen to be able to map the drive, transfers between computers are also very slow.

Any ideas?

 

[radferth]

Try to get all the computers on static IP addresses if they are not already. The problem finding each other could be remedied by adding and entry of each computer and its ip address is the LMHOSTS file (or just always refering to them by their ip addresses). As for slow transfers, that usually means a slow pipe. Either the network has a lot of other traffic, or the data is going out to the internet and back before it reaches the other computer. If it is the latter (or some version thereof) the first fix should help that as well. Home networks are often difficult to figure out, because there is no real standard as to how ISPs handle ip addresses for home computers. At my home I had to resort to one computer connected directly to the router which serves the other computers, as I have only one ip address I can use to talk to the ISP.

 

[Truth Seeker]

I have 3 computers at home, all running Windows XP Home. I've connected them all to a D-Link DI-604 Router.

All three can access the internet just fine - the problem I am having is with filesharing. When I try to map a network drive, the response is very slow and not all computers on the network are visible. If I do happen to be able to map the drive, transfers between computers are also very slow.

Any ideas?

Hmm, possible onboard memory capacity *how much each PC has*, CPU cache flow from PC to PC, and lastily, I have heard that XP Professional is much better than Home Edition on networking...wait, with SP2 update, the differences should not be so big.

Trouble with File Sharing. Scroll down a bit to see the article.

 

[thatdarncat]

I'd started to write out a bunch of troubleshooting steps when I remembered that someone had done it already. Check out http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article64-page1.php

Your problem is going to probably fall under tip 4, but I'd go step by step.

The only other thing I'd recommend at this point is set up static IPs and a custom host file. Makes life a lot simpler

 

[reveal]

Do you have filesharing enabled on all three computers? Windows XP is really picky about that and comes with it turned off by default.

If you do have it, what speed are your network cards? Are they 10Megs or 100Megs? That could explain your speed problems transferring info between computers.

Example, I used to have 10Meg cards in two of my computers. It would take me a good 15 minutes to transfer around 5 megs back and forth between the two. When I switched both to 100Meg cards, that dipped to around 30 seconds.

 

[Wonko the Sane]

Thanks to everyone who replied - my files are now happily zipping about my house

I looked on Tom's Hardware, but that site is just a maze - I never would have found that on my own. Thanks for the link!

 

[thatdarncat]

No worries. Even though I know what I'm looking for I still have to search the site.