First network questions...

[Butler]

I've just finished my first project that shows any sign of becoming a decant network. I have a few questions for those of you seasoned networking/home networking veterans though. First, the specs:
My system specs are as follows:

Asus p3v4x Motherboard (VIA® Apollo Pro133A chipset)
PIII Coppermine 650E Proc. (running @ 900MHz.)
512MB SyncMax PC100
Voodoo3-3000AGP
Sound Blaster Live X-Gamer
Motorolla 56k v.90
Creative 48x ROM (IDE2 master)
Sony CRX120E CDR/RW (IDE2 slave)
Western Digital Caviar 13GB 7200RPM HDD (IDE1 master)
Pioneer 105s slot loading DVD drive (IDE1 slave)
Adaptec 2940U2W SCSI Controller
Seagate U2W SCSI 18GB 10Krpm
3COM 10/100 card
WIN98(First Ed.)

Right now, there are 2 other machines on the net. A PII 333 desktop, that I have basically nothing more than Windoze installed on, and my laptop:

Compaq Armada 1750 notebook
PII 375
128mb
6.4GB HDD
24x CDROM
Compaq nettelligent 10/100 card
Win98

This is all through a 5port D-Link HUB with CAT5 cable. Right now I'm running it with IPX, but I plan on going to TCP/IP as soon as I learn a bit more about what I'm doing.

The problem is (and I'll bet this is a fairly standard problem) that I can't share anything from my laptop. I can get both of
the desktop machines to share, but when I right click on any of the icons on my laptop, there's no "sharing" option.

A few more general network questions. I plan on having some LAN parties, for some gaming etc., and was thinking about buying a switch rather than this HUB. How much performance increase will I see with a switch over a HUB. I guess I'll have as many as 8 machines connected at once, hopefully all with 10/100 cards. Is a switch any harder to configure and use than a HUB?

Thanks in advance for the help with this...

R. Butler

[Steve R Jones]

Sharing->Network Neighborhood->ADD service MS Sharing. Also place a check mark in file sharing.

[thekingofpain]

One of the new router/switches would sure make your homelan scream, especially if you could pull in a DSL/cable connection...I think dLink has one thats under 100$...ive been using a Linksys for months now to network 5 machines, great little piece of equipment, to add another machine online is as simple as pluggin in another cat5 cable...(you cant imagine how many friends/neighbors bring their machines over "just for a trial") darn neighbors keep buggin me about running wire over the back fence to their house... http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif