Computers
- Miki-ni (a.k.a. "the Desktop"): OS Windows 2000 Pro, SP4. Relevant Software: ZoneAlarm 6 (Trusted Zone).
- Miki-chan (a.k.a. "the Laptop): OS Windows 2000 Pro, SP4. Relevant Software: ZoneAlarm 6 (Trusted Zone).
- Suzi-lnx: OS SUSE 9.3. Relevant Software SUSE Firewall (Internal Zone).
Network Setup
DHCP offline (college reasons, details superfluous to this entry)
Physical CAT5e connection to college network removed in the process of troubleshooting early on
When I got back from my brother's wedding, I wanted to do one thing: transfer some anime (kyou kara maou) over to Miki-ni. Since the network was down anyway, I unhooked my link to the college network and reconfigured my computers to have statically assigned IP addresses (since Miki-chan can't get a DHCP address on campus), and with the DHCP server inaccessible to us anyway, it seemed like the logical thing to do.
Miki-ni: 172.16.5.10
Miki-chan: 172.16.5.9
Suzi-LNX: 172.16.5.8
I added Suzi-LNX in there because I wanted to show episode one to James (who was over visiting at the time).
I was able to transfer episode one from Miki-chan to Suzi-LNX without any problem, and after we watched it, I wanted to transfer all the rest to Miki-ni, so I wouldn't have to keep my laptop on all night transferring files from it to Suzi... Doing one big download to Miki-ni seemed like a better idea, Miki-ni is my fileserver anyway.
And that's where all laws of IT-physics seemed to break down. Miki-ni and Miki-chan could not see one another on the network. The ping command didn't work at all...
C:\>ping miki-chan
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
C:\>And worse:
C:\>ping 172.16.5.9
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
C:\>And the same was true for pinging Miki-ni from Miki-chan. I just couldn't get the two machines to work together. Eventually, I set them both to DHCP (knowing that they would get an APIPA address, which should allow them to communicate over the network) I figure that I must have done something wrong -- like configuring the IP settings wrong, or maybe even having the firewall set wrong, so I turned off the firewall, and with their new APIPA addresses, communications should be easy as pie.
But it wasn't. Miki-ni and Miki-chan couldn't see one another nor could they ping one another. They were on the same subnet and had valid APIPA addresses, but they couldn't ping one another. At this point, I was desperate. I restarted both machines, swapped out their CAT5e ethernet cabling for different CAT5e wiring... To no avail. Both machines still couldn't ping one another, let alone get files transferred... You would think that a 5 year college veteran like me, with an associate degree in CIS, and with nearly a dozen Microsoft Networking classes under his belt, I would be able to get a laptop and a desktop (running the same OS, without a firewall) to be able to access one another... But no. Andrew (my roommate) suggested that I use my USB flash drive - but that would have been a lot of work (I wanted to transfer 5 GB of data, and the USB drive is only 512 MB, not to mention that Miki-chan and Miki-ni both have only USB 1.1, so they are pretty limited when it comes to USB).
Eventually, I decided to switch back to a static address (a 192.168.1.z) on all the machines to see if I could get that to work... But once again no... By this time, James had long since left... There wasn't much point in staying around when I'm trying to fix a problem like this, because I'll stay there and work it right into the ground before I give up on it. And that's exactly what I did. It took me a while but eventually I was able to get Suzi to see Miki-chan, and I downloaded all of Kyou Kara Maou over to Suzi (and started watching, as a reward to myself).
What was really odd about this hole situation was that in the beginning, Suzi and Miki-chan could access one another, but never could Miki-chan and Miki-ni see one another. And, as soon as I put Miki-ni on the network with a static address, I couldn't access Miki-chan from Suzi either... I'm not sure if that was a fluke, or if there was something from Miki-ni that was interfering with CIFS/SMB connections. Another oddity was that throughout this entire process, it seems that Suzi was able to access Miki-ni the entire time!
I did notice something odd, that may have been why some of my connections were being so odd... At the end, when I would ping Miki-chan from Linux, the first 7 to 10 ICMP echo requests would not be responded to, I'd see something like this:
indigo@Suzi-lnx:~> ping 172.16.5.9
PING 172.16.5.9 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 172.16.5.9: icmp_seq=9 ttl=245 time=236 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.5.9: icmp_seq=10 ttl=245 time=175 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.5.9: icmp_seq=11 ttl=245 time=171 ms
--- 172.16.5.9 ping statistics ---
11 packets transmitted, 3 received, 73% packet loss
indigo@Suzi-lnx:~>And even when I used Suzi to access Miki-chan, there was a noticeable delay in communication... At first, it took a while between the time I hit "Okay" at the login prompt and the directories were displayed, and then again, when I hit copy on the files of anime and pasted those files over into Suzi, there was another delay... Each seemed to be right around ten seconds long too... Mystery... Maybe, there wasn't a problem with Miki-ni, but maybe there was some type of delay in communication with Miki-chan that caused the default way that windows works to not be able to communicate with it (note that windows has a default maximum ICMP echo request of 4, where as Linux has no default maximum (on any distribution that I've used at least... and SUSE 9.3 is no different).
But, after over two hours of work on this, with only a round-about solution, I decided to at least reward myself for my efforts... I watched episode two of Kyou Kara Maou... And now I'm addicted! Eeaakk! ^_^
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