Title: DirecWay
Satellite Networking Guide
Summary: Internet
Connection Sharing (ICS), Router/Firewall Configuration, Drive Mapping, File
Sharing and Printer Sharing for Satellite Internet Users.
Audience:
Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced PC users owning
and operating Hughes/DirecWay Satellite Internet Systems.
Author: Rex
Winn, AKA: code-frog.
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Internet Connection Sharing
Gateway Description: This device
hosts your satellite USB Modems and will run CAT5 cable from it NIC (Network
Interface Card) also known as LAN (Local Area Network) card. The NIC is a
device that installs into a slot on your PC and has an opening in the back of
it that looks similar to the ports on the router pictured to the lower-left. Function: The ICS
Gateway has one primary job on your LAN. That job is to share out the
internet connection provided by the USB modems and to handle DHCP (Dynamic
Host Configuration Protocol) client requests from devices located on the same
logical network. Settings: The USB
modems will get their settings from the DirecWay NOC (
Wireless/Wired Internet
Router w/Firewall Description: This device
is responsible for many, many functions not all of which will be covered
here. You will notice right away that I have a bright-red X in the WAN (Wide
Area Network) port of the router. That is because on DW4000 Satellite Systems
using the WAN port is problematic at best. If you are interested in
protecting vital resources on your network then using the WAN port may be of
interest to you. Please post a question in the Networking/Security portion
of the forums found at http://www.copperhead.cc/forums
and we can assist you there. The remaining LAN ports are vitally important to
DW4000 users and we will discuss this in greater detail in the function
section. Function: Internet
connection firewalls and routers have two functions. (1) To act as a bridge
between logically disjoint networks. For example your ICS Gateway will hand
out DHCP addresses in the 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.254 range and perhaps you
want to use private addressing in a subnet of your LAN other than
192.168.0.X. A router will allow you to partition off your ICS Gateway
network into a more secure private network in the 10.200.9.1-10.200.9.254
range. Functionally a router can be setup to logically forward data and
internet requests between these two networks in a very secure way. (If this
sounds very confusing to you, GOOD! We will not discuss this again and this
is the reason we will not be using the WAN port on any router for DW4000
based networks.) (2) Provide enhanced security to local private networks by
placing a firewall between the WAN and the LAN interfaces. Settings: Your
wireless/wired internet connection firewall should not have anything in the
WAN port ever (This does not apply to DW6000 users.) as a result your
routers WAN interface does not need any configuration. Your LAN router
interface must have the DHCP
server disabled and you must assign a LAN IPADDRESS in the same range as your
ICS Gateway which will be 192.168.0.X in most cases. In my guide I recommend
192.168.0.99.
ICS Clients Description: The next 5
items I will be discussing are identical in every way accept one which will
be pointed out in this section. The 5 computers you see to the left are
client workstations. A client can be wired or wireless and functions
identically if its a desktop or a laptop. Typically clients are stand alone
PCs apart from the satellite host that will be sharing the internet
connection amongst themselves. Client PCs will tend
to be the machines that families and businesses will use on a regular basis. Function: Client PCs
have a basic function in the scope of a satellite based LAN. They send out a
DHCP request to the server and the server assigns them the proper settings
they need in order to get email and surf the internet. On satellite networks
each Client PC should be responsible for maintaining its
own virus and network security using locally installed applications. Settings: Client PCs
should have their network adapters set to use DHCP addressing. What this
means is that the end user should have no work involved other than inserting
a wireless network card or a CAT 5 cable and in each case the PC is
automatically configured by the DHCP Server also the ICS Gateway. Below I
list 5 tables each containing similar settings. The only distinction is in
the LAN TCPIP addresses. You will notice that the IP Addresses have the first
3 portions the same i.e. 192.168.0 and each of them differ by one digit 10,
11, 12, 13, 14 in the last portion. This is by design. If you manually
hard-code these settings as they are here into the NIC or Wireless Network
card of each machine your network will work just fine. However, you do not need to worry about this if
you are using DHCP which is recommended. If you are using DHCP the ICS
Gateway will hand out addresses just like these and will auto-configure any
laptop or desktop that is configured to use DHCP. If you are using DHCP and
you wish to know what your LAN TCPIP Address is you can do so at the command
line which will be discussed later.
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Now that we have a high level overview of what an ICS
Gateway enabled network is lets actually get into the dirt of the details. To
begin with I am going to assume that you do have a wireless or wired router and
that you have 1 or more wireless or wired clients. Each reader of this document
should have at least 2 PCs one functioning as the ICS Gateway and the other
operating as an ICS Client. Lets get started by first getting the PC you have
chosen as your ICS Satellite Gateway configured to share out its internet
connection so that one or more clients may be joined to your network and with a
very minimal amount of work can be set up to surf and check email using your
DirecWay Satellite connection. All portions of this document assume you will be
using Windows XP Professional Edition with the latest service packs and updates.
For readers not having Windows XP the specifics still apply but the
configuration steps will be different in every case of Windows
95/98/ME/NT4/2000.
Lets start by logging onto the
machine you have selected as the Satellite ICS Gateway and begin the process of
configuring it to do just that. On your designated ICS Gateway please open the
system control panel. You can access the control panel from the Start Menu
found in the lower left hand corner of your Windows desktop menu system. On my
workstation the path for me is Start Menu Settings Control Panel Network
Connections. You should now be looking at a folder like this:
Now
in your window you wont be looking at a DIRECWAY Satellite Connection that has
a hand under it but we are about to put one there. Go ahead and right
mouse-click the DIRECWAY Satellite Connection icon and select properties. In
the properties dialog click the Advanced tab and you
should be looking at this: (Make sure that Internet Connection Firewall is not
checked and put a check in Allow other network users to connect through this
computers Internet connection. Click the OK button and then let your computer
chunk and whir until the connection is shared.)
Once we have Internet Connection
Sharing setup on the ICS Gateway machine go ahead and verify that there is a
hand under it the DIRECWAY Satellite Connection icon and then close the Network
Connections window. That should be all we need to do on the host for now. The
next step in this process is to get the router configured and working with the
host. In order to do this you will need to have one of the clients in my
example a laptop, a length of CAT 5 cable and the router.
Now
take a length of CAT5 and plug it into the NIC on your laptop computer. Take
the other end of the CAT5 cable and plug this into the first LAN port (#1) on
your router. NOTHING should be in the WAN port now or should ever be in the WAN
port of your router. Now we have a CAT5 cable running from your NIC on your
laptop to the 1st LAN port on your router. If your router is plugged in go
ahead and unplug it, count to ten and plug it back in. Once you have plugged it
back in count to 30 very slowly using 1000s. Once you have reached 30 please
sit down in front of your laptop and run the following test for me. Please go
to the Start Menu->Run and click on Run in the run window text area please
type CMD and press the Okay button.
You
will now see a black window on your screen. This is called the command prompt.
This window only accepts text commands and gives text output. At the command
prompt please type ipconfig /all and press the enter key. You may not see anything remotely like what
is below. If this is the case please go to Start Menu->Control
Panel->Network Connections, right mouse click Local Area Connection and
select Properties. In the General tab scroll down to TCP/IP select it
and click Properties. In the new window make sure that the Dynamic options
are checked for IP Address and DNS Settings, then Okay and Okay. Please go
back to the beginning of the paragraph and start over. If the results in
the window show the following information:
Default Gateway: 192.168.0.1 is bad this will conflict with the ICS Gateway and needs to
be changed.
We need to go into your router and
make a few changes. If you do not see
these numbers, mainly the 192.168.0.1 then your router is safe for us to
continue as it will not interfere with our efforts to setup internet connection
sharing on your host PC. If you do see these numbers then keep reading.
Everyone else tag along as the information wont be boring or useless. Please
note that the LAN settings on your router MUST have a
192.168.0.X IP address (it just CANNOT be 192.168.0.1) nor can it have any
other Subnet Mask than 255.255.255.0 if either of these numbers are not present
please follow my next steps. NOTE: If your settings are different from
those above I.E. 192.168.168.168 or something else please refer to the specs
that came with your router. It may have different default settings. If this is
the case please follow the instructions in your manual for connecting to your
router and please change the LAN IP address of your router to 192.168.0.99 and
the subnet to 255.255.255.0. Lets
now open the Web Browser Configuration Panel for your router. To be safe,
please open Internet Explorer and go to the Tools menu and select Internet
Options. In the Internet Options window please click the Connections tab
click the LAN settings and UNCHECK the Use a proxy server (Note: If this
is not checked please dont worry. I dont expect it to be but I am being
thorough.) click Okay and Okay again to return to
your web browser.
Now
in the URL text area (Has text in it that starts with http://www.) please
delete the http://www text all of it and then type 192.168.0.1 and press the enter key. You
may be prompted for a username and password (Please refer to YOUR documentation
for the username and password.) it is typically admin and then password or
sometimes just password in the username.
We are now at your routers Web Enabled Configuration
page. You should see a lot of different tabs. Some of them might be LAN,
WAN, WIRELESS, FIREWALL, DHCP, STATUS, etc There will probably be
some others but those are the common set. Please click on the LAN settings
and change the LAN IP Address to 192.168.0.99 and the subnet mask to
255.255.255.0 you dont need anything else. (Here a D-Link is pictured, at the very end of
this document I will add pictures of other devices and their respective
settings as I receive them. So if you do not have a D-Link scroll down. At the
time of this writing Linksys is down at the bottom.)
Now click on or locate DHCP server settings. You
want to disable this device as a DHCP server. We absolutely do not want this to
be a DHCP server. If you are unsure how to go about this please consult your
manual. If you do not have one please download the manual from your
manufacturers website. If that does not help then Private Message me on the
boards.
Once we have disabled DHCP and have an IP address that
is not 192.168.0.1 lets go back into your internet options and put that check
in Use proxy server if we unchecked it earlier.
Okay, so now we have a router that has DHCP disabled and has
a LAN IP Address that IS NOT 192.168.0.1 as this is reserved for our DirecWay
host. Right now we have CAT5 running from your laptop into the 1st LAN port on
your router. Now lets get the host setup and ready to share its
resources. At this time you need to take another CAT5 cable and run it from
your host PC into the 2nd LAN port on the router (Order does not matter, it can
be in any port unless your documentation says otherwise but it shouldnt.) Some
people may prefer to power off the host the router and the client at this step.
If you are running Windows XP I find its just easier to open a command window
and perform an IPCONFIG /RELEASE and an IPCONFIG /RENEW as shown below. This particular example is on my LAN so you
will not see 192.168.0.X addresses as I use a 10.200.7.X scheme so dont be
confused by that. Now lets test this. Please go to your CLIENT box or
laptop and in the command prompt I want you to type, ipconfig
/release you should see something like this:
If you see a warning that the adapter is not
configured for dynamic settings then we need to fix that. On the client PC
please go to Start Menu-> Control Panel->Network Connections (or for others Start Menu->Control Panel->Network
Connections) and right-mouse-click on Local Area Network and select
properties.
In the General tab please scroll to the bottom of
the window and select TCP/IP and click Properties make sure that the
Dynamic options are checked for IP address and DNS settings.
Once both radio buttons are checked click Okay and
Okay out. When the prompt returns please type ipconfig /renew and you will
now see those zeros get replaced by something like this: Again,
I use a 10.200.7.X address scheme YOU should see something with 192.168.0.X
instead of 10.200.7.100.
Now try surfing
the internet and see what happens. Your browser will probably be very slow. To
fix this please go to http://www.copperhead.cc
and download the SatSpeed 1.0 utility and the DirecWay LAN Client Configuration
Utility (LCCU). Please run both of these on your XP Client and then restart the
client. Browser speeds should be significantly improved. Congratulations, you
have now setup ICS on your host PC and your new wired/wireless router should be
ready to go. On your laptop please unplug the CAT5 cable from your NIC (Network
Interface Connection) port. Please insert the CD containing your wireless
network drivers and follow the instructions for installing the wireless
networking PCMCIA adapter. It should go something to the effect of:
- Install
drivers (with card removed). Reboot Machine.
- As
machine is booting insert wireless card.
- Let
Windows Auto-Detect and let it load the drivers.
- Surf
away.
This is what the finished product will look like:
File & Printer Sharing on Windows XP
Sharing files, folders, printers and other resources
on Windows XP is a pretty simple thing to accomplish in most cases. You will
find that you may hit more brick walls than you like though if you dont follow
some practical guidelines first. I am going to provide a bulleted list of
things you should do before attempting to share resources between two or more
PCs using Windows XP.
- You should have an ICS
Gateway enabled network setup and working properly. All machines on the
network should be able to ping the ICS Gateway, surf all sites on the
internet and send and receive email. If your network is not allowing for
this yet please go to the beginning of this document for a thorough explanation
into how you go about achieving this.
- All Windows XP
machines should have at least one account that is set up identically to
allow for sharing resources. On all my machines I have an account set up
named netuser, this is an Administrator account with full access on
every machine. I highly recommend you create this user on each machine. (I
will provide steps in a moment for doing so.)
- All machines should
either be on a domain (Requiring a domain server.) or on the same
workgroup. (Ill explain this too.)
Okay,
lets get Windows XP ready to share files and other local resources. To begin
with a few small details need to be finalized. Lets start by minimizing all
Windows to your desktop. On your XP desktop you should have a My Computer
icon. If you dont have this icon then we need to get it up and out there. Its way to useful to not have it visible. Lets start by
right-mouse-clicking the desktop and select properties.
In
the new dialog that is now showing select Desktop and then click Customize
Desktop.
In
the new dialog put a check in My Computer and anything else that youd like
to have your desktop then OK all the way back out to your desktop.
Now
right mouse click the My Computer icon and select manage.
In
the new dialog there will be an area for managing users (Windows XP Home
Edition users will not have this. XP Home edition users will access user
management from the control panel. The steps are the same though.) Expand the
Local Users and Groups node and select Users.
Right
mouse click Users and select New User.
In
the new user dialog fill in the User name field and give a full name use
whatever you like also include a description so you are not wondering later why
exactly you created this account. Since you are the user and in control of your
network go ahead and put a check in Password never expires. You can always
come back here to change it. Then click the create button and then close the
window.
Now
in the tree on the right find netuser and double-click on it.
Click
the Member Of tab and then highlight and Remove the Users entry. Then
click Add and in the new Window type Administrators and click OK then
OK back to the desktop.
Now
back at the desktop right-mouse-click your My Computer icon and select
Properties.
Click
Computer Name and then click Change.
Make
sure that if you are on a domain you have the correct domain name entered, if
you are setting up a WORGOUP then I would use the Workgroup value that is
contained in the same screen on your ICS Gateway. In this example I use
WORKGROUP for consistency. You will also notice Computer name: in this
example mine is iceberg please write down the computer names of each of your
desktops and your host. This information can also be obtained from doing an
IPCONFIG /ALL at the command line. If you dont like your computer name you can
change it to anything you want (requires a reboot). I recommend something
meaningful. For instance your ICS Gateway should be something like Gateway or
DirecWay. Your Dell Precision laptop could be Precision and so on down the
line of clients. When you are satisfied Ok out of here back
to your Windows XP Desktop. REMEMBER, your ICS Gateways workgroup is
the COMMON DENOMINATOR whatever it has is what all your PCs should have as the
workgroup or domain.
I now want summarize what we have just done for
clarity and to provide a reference as we move forward. Each machine on your
local network should now have a common Administrative user account. In the
example I provided I used netuser. Each machine should have a My Computer
icon on the desktop for easy access and each machine should be on the same
workgroup or domain as the ICS Gateway. At this point Windows XP should be
ready to share what it has with other devices on the network.
Windows XP is incredibly SMART it thinks you need
protection from yourself so it disables something that is really handy. To get
file sharing, drive mapping and printer sharing working do the following: Start
Menu->All Programs->Accessories->Windows Explorer Then in the menu's
across the top, Tools->Folder Options
In
the new dialog click the 'View' tab and scroll all the way to the bottom.
Uncheck the 'Use Simple File Sharing' (Recommended).
You
should have at least one hard drive in each computer. On any box right mouse
click your C drive and select 'sharing' in the menu. In the new window you
should see share as C$ (For administrative purposes). NOTE: This step will work on any drive including CD/DVD and floppy.
Simply share the drive out I use the letter + $ for ease of use. So if I was
going to share the A:\ drive I would share it as A$.
So
now we know the share name let's make use of it. To share files we need 2 or
more computers. We would like machine names but IP addresses will also work. So
for me I am going to use my two boxes: DirecWay and rawinn-tba
(NOTE: DirecWay is the name I gave to my
ICS Gateway and rawinn-tba is a name given to my
laptop. Your computers will certainly have different machine names). I want
rawinn-tba to be able to access everything on DirecWay's C drive. So on rawinn-tba
in Windows Explorer go to the Tools menu (again) this
time select "MAP NETWORK DRIVE".
We
should see something just like this:
Now
in the dialog we have two input options one for drive and one for folder. For
drive you will have a list of all of your available drive letters. Pick one,
doesn't matter at all. In this example we will use (P:\)
Then in folder in my example I will type "\\direcway\C$" in your case
you will type "\\machine_name\C$ or "\\192.168.0.1\C$" works
too.
Now
if you log on to both boxes with the same username and password then no sweat
this is easy. However, if you use UserNameX on box
one and UserNameY on
If you wish to share a file or
printer the process is very similar. Locate the file or the printer using
Windows Explorer or the Control Panel Printers. Right click on the file or
printer and select sharing. Similar steps are involved. Once you have shared a
file or printer to another computer or username you should be able to access
that file printer every time from then on. Here is what it looks like for
Printer Sharing: (In this example my printer share name is HPOffice.
Functionally
this is what we should now have accomplished.
ADDITIONAL ROUTERS
Linksys
Thats
it for now. This guide covers most of what a home user might want to do. Good
luck and well see you on the boards.
Best
Regards,
Rex
Winn, Code frog System Architects
