Networking Help [sigh]

[FBI]

Being a programmer for 9 years now I still don't have a clue about
these networks :)

I bought a linksys 5-port workgroup switch about a year ago and
it works great, it gives each of my 3 computers connected to the switch
their own IP address (not private ip addresses). The problem I have
is that i'm developing an application and it has to connect to one of
the computers on my network.. but i can't connect to or from any of
the computers on the Switch. I can't even ping the IPs.. all of the
systems have windows xp pro and the built in firewall is disabled.

so can anyone help? is there a built in firewall in the switch or how
do I go about getting computers on the switch to send and receive
packets from each other. Anything excluding use of proxies :P

Thanks !
FBI

[FBI]

note: all of the systems are working online, each can access the
internet, send and recieve files from others...

the problem is sending and receiving between two computers on
the switch itself, the computer i'm using right now to write this is
on the switch.

gah this is so confusing

FBI

[Redburn]

You need to setup your file sharing, go to the control panel and find the network connection icon, click on that and on the left side of the window that pops up find the title "My Network places" click on that and on the left side of that find "setup a home of small office network" follow the networking wizard and that should allow you to access your other computers on the network. You might have to do the same thing on all your computers and MAKE SURE you have a firewall running at all time or set your file sharing to password access only, if not you can infect all your computers on your network at once if one gets a virus.

[Divide]

why dont you try enabling the firewall on one of the machine, and then manually configure a private network on the other two. This can be achieved with 1 nic, though it is much simpler, and definately more reliable with 2.

Other than that, all I can think of is making sure these machines all operate on the same workgroup, and then using netbios names to address them... though Im not entirely sure that would work in your situation.

[IceStorm]

It sounds like the three computers are DHCPing addresses from your broadband provider via the cable/DSL bridge that is also plugged into the switch. If it's a switch and not a router, then the switch itself is not assigning IPs to anything, it's just a layer 2 device forwarding frames.

Do all your machines have IPs in the same subnet? If not, you may not be able to ping them if they have to go to the far-end router. At least one provider near me blocks communications between subnets on the same router (or at least ping).

Is there a reason you don't just replace the switch with a four or eight port router and put them all behind the router with its intergrated firewall? It's not a great idea to stick PCs directly onto the Internet...