Mac O SX 10.2.4, and setting up Linksys network?

[googo151]

Hey,
I was wondering what to do to set up a Local network, using my Linksys 4 port router with OSX Jaguar, as a Network between the Desktop, and Mac laptop computers. Any help would be great. Already set up as a DHCP server.

Thanks - Angel

[vertigo]

if I'm not mistaken, you would just set up each Mac to use DHCP Automatically (in Network Setting) and then connect to your router. That's it. They should be able to see each other fine.

Is that all you were trying to do, or is there more to the problem?

[MadisDaddy]

Vertigo is correct. I have my Jag system, an XP box and an HP LJ 4000 plugged into a Linksys router. Zero significant issues.

[bluehz]

This is correct - but I personally prefer assigning IP numbers to machines manually - that way you can among other things - add their ips and associated names to your /etc/hosts file and then call them up from the network by name. I have never really found DHCP to be very reliable on Mac platform (although I have not tried it in years since OS 9 days), so thats why I really prefer manually assigning IP's. There are of course a multitude of ways of hooking up a nice LAN (local area network) with your LinkSys - among them the method I mentioned using defined IP numbers, the DHCP method described above where each machine acquires an assigned IP number from the router, and if I am not mistaken you could probably use what is know as "zero-config networking" aka "Rendezvous" in OS X. Zero-config networking is made for just such a situation as yours - where you may not be too knowledgable of ho to network, or you don't really want to mess with setting up things, etc. Zero-config in theory is the "plug-n-play" of the networking world. You plug it in an it works... no mus no fuss. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of "zero-config" setup myself as its relatively new - but I am sure there is some info around - including on the main Mac OS X Hints site.

If you chose to do it the old fashioned way and manually assign IP numbers to your network - here's a quick rundown.

FWIW - here is great resource for networking...
http://practicallynetworked.com/howto/

First of all you will be assigning non-internet legal numbers to your internal machines. There are a myriad of numbers you can use - but basically it means choosing IP numbers that are not used out on the open road internet. The easiest scenario is in the range 192.168.1.0 to 192.168.1.255 this gives you 255 possible numbers to play with. We will assume for this demo that you are using this range of numbers.

Unless you have change it - your Linksys is already setup for this type of IP addressing. As a matter of fact the IP address of the router is 192.168.1.1. If you can get to your routers setup page by entering 192.168.1.1 in a browser - then its setup like this. Now all you need to do is assign numbers to each of your machines on the network. Lets assume you have a G4, an iMac, and a iBook. We will be assigning the following IP numbers to these machines:

192.168.1.100 > G4
192.168.1.101 > iMac
192.168.1.102 > iBook

The only reason I chose this scheme (skipping the first 100 numbers in the sequence) is purely old skool. It used to be in OS 9 and below - the Mac had "issues" with numbers below 100. So if you prefer choose whatever numbers you want between 2 and 255 and use those as the last digit of your IP numbers. The first 3 digits - 192.168.1 MUST STAY THE SAME.

Go to each of your machines and open up the System Preferences > Network. Change the drop down menu to "manuall" and you should see several fields appear below that. For the G4 you will enter:

IP Address: 192.168.1.100
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Router: 192.168.1.1

also enter your IPS's DNS server numbers in the DNS box (or if you are using cable/DSL you can even leave this blank - the router picks up the DNS servers and you can just pull it from there with no additinal setup). Thats it, click apply now close the network prefpane and that machine is all set. Now just repeat for each of the machines on your network - only each thing that changes on each machines setup is the IP number - the rest (Subnet, Router, DNS) all stay the same.

You should now have a simple, addressable LAN going around your LinkSys.

if you want to go one step further - you can assign names to each machine and then be able to call each machine by its name instead of its IP number. This is the ideal situation since everyone won't know as much about your network as you.

To do this you will need to access a file /etc/hosts. This file is only accessible as the root user. If you are unsure what a root user is you probably don't won't to continue any further with this. Otherwise - open the terminal and enter:

sudo pico /etc/hosts

you will be asked to enter your root password. Then the file will open. DO NOT ALTER ANYTHING THAT IS ALREADY IN THIS FILE! You wil be adding your numbers below the pre-existing numbers. Decide on a name for each of your machines. You might even want to think of it as a domain - say for example - johnsdomain.lan - this is purely fictitious and not internet legal so you can get away with it. Basically you are saying all the machines in my LAN are on teh domain "johnsdomain.lan". Now each of the machines on your LAN could be given a name like:

g4.johnsdomain.lan
iMac.johnsdomain.lan
iBook.johnsdomain.lan

So within this hosts file that you have open you are going to identify each machine name with its assigned IP number. At the bottom of the hosts file you would enter:

192.168.1.1 gw.johnsdomain.lan gw
192.168.1.100 g4.johnsdomain.lan g4
192.168.1.101 imac.johnsdomain.lan iMac
192.168.1.102 ibook.johnsdomain.lan ibook

you will notice we have first the assigned IP number, then the full domain name you chose (optional) and then a short name you assigned - g4, ibook, etc. Note the first entry is optional and for the router (aka "gateway" - gw). You should now be able to call up machines on your lan via their full url or simply their shortnames. You could do something like Finder > Connect to.. and enter "afp://g4" in the field to connect to your g4.

Couple of caveats - this is by no means an exhaustive discussion of this topic - it is very simplified and not exactly proper networking - but it works great for the small LAN. Secondly - you will need to edit the /etc/hosts file on ALL machines on your LAN to get the same fucntionality. The /etc/hosts file will contain the same info on each machine. Also - you may need to restart after doing this - not sure.

Hope that helps...