Networking stuff

[xenon2000]

I can't do msn transfers :|

We could not send this file because the connection is blocked. Please contact your network administrator or Internet service provider; they may be able to enable file transfers.

Basically, it's been since we've got this new computer and network setup. Before it was just the one PC linked to a modem. Now we have a sort of.. hub thingy ('Neatgear hub EN104tp' is what it says on the side) which both computers are linked to. Now I can still surf the net, check my email, download stuff and even receive files, but can't send them (I'm guessing that not being able to send mIRC DCCs or connect to kazaa has something to do with it too..).

After a brief session of googling, I found out this marvellous solution:

To enable file transfers, enable both incoming and outgoing TCP connections to the 6891-6900 range of TCP ports. This allows each sender to perform up to 10 simultaneous file transfers. Note that if only TCP port 6891 is open, users are only able to perform one file transfer at a time.

All very nice, except that means precisely fuck all to me (excuse my ignorance and noobishness, i can't help being stupid). I even tried searching up on ports and how to enable them but couldn't find anything resembling a dummies' guide to the situation.

Soooo... if anyone's remotely clued up about how these things work, then I'd greatly appreciate some more human advice/solutions as to how I can make things go proper. TIA

 

[Will]

You need the hub thingie to forward ports 6891-6900 to your pc. I'd look up the manual for it and see if this is possible.

 

[Insane]

the Netgear EN104tp hub is a plain 10 Base-T hub, it doesnt share your internet access, but is nice and compact and does its job pretty well

Basically to fix it you need to go to the machine thats got the modem, and get the properties of the internet connection.

Usually the last tab about internet sharing is enabled , theres a button on the bottom right (hey, im doing this all through memory, i havnt used ICS in ages!) marked either as "options" or "more"

the rest evades me atm, but you can add ports there, just discover what your machine's ipaddress is (Win2k/XP run command prompt and type IPCONFIG, Win98 go to the run command and type WINIPCFG)
it should be 192.168.0.2 or similar

type into the ports (or it could be server) the port (6891) and your IP address (192.168.0.2)
then do the same for the other ports if you want to be able to send more than one file at a time.

of course I could be wrong because i havnt used windows ICS in ages

 

[xenon2000]

Itcheh.. 'fraid the manual wasn't any help RTFM was my first idea believe it or not.. the only time it mentions anything about ports is in the bit about what the four physical sockets can be connected to.

Insane: that all makes sense to me.. but that elusive 'options' button didn't exist on the ICS properties :/

And I guess i should have mentioned the OS on the 'host' machine is WinME, which is so unbelievably retarded that I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't provide an option to add ports in the first place :|

One other thing I did was check the ports section under the device manager.. but only found three there; COM1, COM2, and the printer one. Should there be more? Or do they need to be installed before being added? It's all gotten me quite lost

 

[Will]

Well, if ICS is shit, change to a different method of sharing. Winroute is apparently pretty good, and I use a hardware router with a built in 4-port switch.