Re: Re OT Search terms

[Bob Molyneux drdata@xxxxxxxx]

Patricia, I lied, I noticed something on your reply that I missed earlier
and I am going to respond to it after all.
> Bob: Carl gave me a good lead, but since you asked:
> Ethernet connection in both cases over 10/100 base T Cat 5. Win 98 SE on
> the laptop and my desktop, Win 98 and 95 OSR/2 on the office desktops. I
> need to check at the office to see whether they're using static or
> dynamic addressing; network isn't set up on my desktop yet. Does one have
> a choice, or does the install wizard just assign the addressing protocol?
Static or dynamic addressing is set up by your sysadmin. The very clear
preference these days is to use dynamic addressing for client machines and
to use DHCP to assign IP addresses and the other necessary numbers to that
class of machines. If your sysadmin gives you a bunch of numbers to enter,
that is likely a place with static addressing. When you go through the
wizard, you will choose. You will enter the IP address, default gateway,
the subnet mask, and the DNS servers if your sysadmin assigns them,
otherwise, you will choose to get those numbers automagically, et, voila,
DHCP handles it.
> Robert: thanks for all that, but the chief thing is I'm NOT interested in
> Internet connectivity.
However, given that you are not interested in Internet connectivity, why
run TCP/IP? I can think of reasons for doing that but I am guessing you
will be running Windows workgroups, which is another set of protocols, to
exchange information between the machines. In which case, static or dynamic
is moot. I think. I still don't understand what you are joining.
> Nobody here has broadband, and the office is using
> (shudder) AOL. What I basically need is to be able to copy files too big
> for floppies (the laptop's CD is too old to read CD-Rs) back and forth
> from laptop to desktop, here and there. In a pinch I can hook the
> parallel port Zip Drive up to the laptop, and both my desktop and one at
> the office have built-in ZIPs. But a network connection would be simpler.
> I set up two of the office desktops to be part of the existing network,
> but I wasn't sure how to be part of two separate ones.
I don't understand where the two networks--why not have all machines on a
hub or a switch--are but when you join two networks, you are usually
talking switches these days. Fortunately, there are many kinds and cheap.
Then the two networks are effectively segments of one bigger network. Or,
better, each machine is on its own segment. Everyone talks to everyone--one
big happy family.

That is the outline. There are some devils in some details.
>  Will see if 98
> supports User profiles; I think it does, though nowhere near as well as
> NT/2K/XP. Thanks to the Ping lesson you gave me earlier, when we were
> looking into mapping USB, I do have this PC's address. (By the by, I got
> a ThinkPad: 760XL. The CD's a pathetic 4x and won't eject, but I swear
> the machine boots faster than my nominally 10 times as fast desktop. Go
> figure.)
> Patricia

Bob Molyneux
drdata@xxxxxxxx