Collisions

[yearrgh]

Can anyone tell me how to stop collisions? I've been trying to network mine and my brother's computers for several months now and the collision light on my hub lights up when i plug in his computer. Also, the activity light is flashing, rather than constant. Any advice would be appreciated.

[a Bill]

Only use TCP/IP and use a switch instead of a hub. You guys must be using netbui or appletalk http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[LostUser]

When you first plug in the network cable to the hub the collision light normally flashes away for up to 5 seconds. After that it shouldn't be lit up but you may see it occasionally flash. If it is constantly on I would suggest you might be using cross-over cables rather than straight through.

The activity lights should be on, all of the time, apart from when data is being transferred across the network in which case they will flash.

You do not need to buy a switch just to host two PC's and it has nothing to do with TCP/IP.

Regards

[yearrgh]

I'm using TCP/IP. One strange thing i've noticed, when i open network neighborhood on my brother's computer, it can't even see itself. Mine can. Does this mean anything? Once again, thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[LostUser]

You might want to try pinging the computers to see if they can actually contact each other. If you are using TCP/IP, I presume that you have allocated each PC an IP Address. This is done in Network settings, under TCP/IP--> for network card.

What you then need to do is go to your PC, go to the MSDOS prompt and type "ping 192.168.0.1". Obviously replace 192.168.0.1 with whatever the IP address of your brother's PC is. Hopefully you will get replies on the screen indicating bytes and time etc. If it can't contact the PC it will send back timeouts.

If you get back replies then maybe you have not enabled file sharing in the network settings. You also need to share the hard drives by right clicking on the icons in "My computer" and selecting Sharing. Go in there and enable sharing.

Make sure that your lights are working as I describe in the earlier post first though.

[bkehoe]

No matter what hub I use, I get nearly full time collisions whenever I enable full duplex. Network goes dlow, e.t.c. Back to half duplex, and never a collision. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
Brendan

[yearrgh]

It times out when i try to ping his comp. however, in system it says his nic is working properly, and i've tried 2 brand-new cables. Is there anything else that can block the connection?

[LostUser]

You might want to try pinging 127.0.0.1 on both machines. This will prove that TCP/IP is setup properly on both machines. Make sure that both machines are on the same subnet, i.e. 255.255.255.0.

Are the lights on the hub acting properly, as I described above? Does the activity light for that PC on the hub come on when the PC is booted up?

[yearrgh]

Just tried it and got all four replies on both machines. I've noticed something unusual: For some reason, in my network control panel i've got two adapters for my nic and two tcp/ip protocols for it. if i delete one of the pair and reset my computer, they return. Any idea what this means?