OS X Networking Problem

[moron]

I'm having horrible problems with my network, and I'm really hoping that someone here can suggest a way to fix it!

I'm currently living in a student house, and we share an ADSL connection across our network. We have an ethernet ADSL router plugged into a hub, which feeds 2 PCs upstairs, and then another hub plugs into that one and feeds my desktop PC and my powerbook G4. We've been running this setup for about 2 months now, with absolutely no troubles at all, until the other day, when my computers suddenly failed to use the network, and haven't been able to since. As far as I'm aware I haven't done anything to trigger this, it just seems to have come from nowhere.

I pulled the whole network apart, replugged it, but that hasn't helped. It must be some sort of network hardware failure, right?! WRONG! I'm running a dual XP boot on my PC (one installation for playing games etc, and one installation for audio use), and I can access the internet fine from the 'music side', but the 'games side' refuses to recognise my internet connection. As for my mac, it won't allow me access to the internet either, but does allow networking too and from my PC (with which it shares a hub), but won't recognise the PCs upstairs. Its almost as if it can't find the link between the hub upstairs and my one downstairs. The thing is, I even tried plugging the ethernet jack from the back of the router straight into the back of my powerbook, and it still wouldn't allow me on the internet.

I'm currently at a friends house using their wireless connection to send this, and it seems to work fine, if that means anything? I've tried digging through settings and all that, with no luck. The only thing I could find was within the 'Internet Connect' menu; there's internet options for the internal modem, and the airport connection, but nothing for the internal ethernet. Does this mean anything? Is there a way to reset all my network settings from within OS X or something? My only guess is that there's some kind of driverr failure or something, and I'm hoping that resetting my network settings might help.

If anyone could help me out here, I'll be eternally greatful - this is bugging the hell out of me!

Cheers in advance!

mike

 

[tomf87]

Does the DSL router you are referring to perform NAT? The only thing in common between all the problems you mentioned is IP addressing. MAC addresses aren't your problem since your audio boot of your XP box is OK, but the gaming boot is not. Of course, I'm assuming that you are using the same network card to connect the two bootable OS'es to the network. I've seen Windows use IP's it had used before if the DHCP server cannot be contacted.

Now, if you are just using the router given to you by your ISP, chances are it is not doing NAT, and each network card is getting their IP from the provider. And most ISP's limit the number of IP's you can get from them at one time.

I would suggest grabbing a broadband router from a local electronics store (Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA in the US) such as a Linksys. This will allow all of your systems to get IP's from the broadband router, and all traffic will look like it is coming from one IP on the Internet. This means you will no longer be limited by the number of machines on your internal network, since the ISP cannot see them individually.

Hope this helps,

Tom