Apartment building networking question

[thewhitehart]

This might be a better question for a networking forum, but perhaps someone here can help me first.

My building has a shared network. There are six floors in the building and fifteen apartments on each floor. Each room has ethernet.

The Internet was running really slow, and many residents complained. So the management hired a new company to redesign the network.

The Internet is a lot faster now, but it seems I can no longer share files with my neighbors. I can't see their macs or PCs anymore in the Finder. I talked with my neighbors, and it seems we all share the same IP address range; 10.10.2.x. The gateway is at 10.10.2.1.

I'm just a little familiar with IP. We tried to ping each other while on the network at the same time, but I can't ping any local IP besides 10.10.2.1.

Is it possible to isolate everyone on the network, even if they share the same IP range? Can someone teach me how this is done? I am just curious to know. I suppose the management didn't want us sharing files anymore.

If it helps to know, there was a router on the second floor and two switches connecting the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors. Then there were two switches on the 6th floor connecting the 6th, 5th, and 4th floors.

 

[satcomer]

They are probaly using something like VLANS on a building Cisco Catalyst Switch. Either that or some kind of Firewall for the different VLANS.

Open System Preferences->Network and get the router IP. Then put that IP in your Browser address bar and see the login window of the router then you can know what you are connecting to in your LAN.

 

[thewhitehart]

Hi. Thanks for your reply. I tried that, but they seemed to have blocked access to the router through the web. I've pinged it, and it's listed as the router in the Network pane. But Safari tells me it can't connect to the server.

 

[satcomer]

Hi. Thanks for your reply. I tried that, but they seemed to have blocked access to the router through the web. I've pinged it, and it's listed as the router in the Network pane. But Safari tells me it can't connect to the server.

That tells me they are either using a Server has a software firewall or a hardware firewall between you and the router.

 

[thewhitehart]

I wish I could just look in the networking cabinet on the second floor, but they have since locked it. When the Internet went down, people used to unplug the router and plug it back in again to reset it.

I'd ask the manager to show me, but I'm a little embarrassed.