Need some advice on learning networking

[BillyCarpenter]

lets break down... your wired and wireless card issue...

say you get internet connected to your house via comcast or other service...
its usually coming to you through a router...
the router usually has ports on the back...
one port has the signal coming in...
and the others sometimes 4 or more... is where you connect your other computers...
lets just deal with your router as a black box...
lets deal with whats coming out of your router...
your router is assigned an ip range by your service provider... subnet and gateway...
and usually this router has dhcp turned on so that it can pick any ip address in that pool...
you can have lets say their are four ports... you can have four computers directly connected...
which would have their own ip address assigned by dhcp...
say you wanted to expand how many computers could connect...
then you would connect one of those ports to a switch... all this does is expand the amount of ports that the router from your provider uses...
say your router had wifi... then you can connect more devices this time via wifi... with no direct connection...
say the signal was too weak from wifi to get to a certain room...
then you would have a wireless bridge or a repeater -- the strategy is that this device or pair of devices... grabs the weak wifi signal and repeats it at a higher strength so you can connect via wifi... but you connect to the repeater and the repeater connects to your devices wifi...
think of the repeater as a network switch without wires...

thats a basic home network with just the router from your service provider...

now lets say you wanted to create your own little network...
you can connect your service provider router to a router that you bought...
now the service provider router would be feeding a signal out of one of its ports... directly into the input of your router...
and in this router you can create your own ip range, subnet, gateway...
depending on the sophistication of your own router... you might have various kinds of protections built into it... routers can be quite sophisticated...
and then you can connect switches and repeaters and do all that stuff under the protection of your own router...

now what we just discussed is the basics of a local area network... but with a few more bells and whistles and a lot more finances thats what your internet service provider is doing when they put a router in your home...

as an aside... most internet service providers don't like you to know that you can buy a router that meets their specs and only pay for the internet usage and not the equipment rental or purchase fees...
an aside...

ok... where does the problem come in...

sometimes you might go to a customer site that has somethings connected to devices connected to their internet service provider router and some connected to thier router... if their router is setup where dhcp is disabled then their router is functioning as a network switch... no problem... everyone can communicate with each other... no problem... but if their router is connected as a router with dhcp turned on... depending on the traffic some devices on the router may not be able to communicate with others on the service provider router... you will have internet to everybody but your scanning to folder and email can break... because not everyone can see everyone else...

this is usually when you call in their it person... you don't want to be redesigning their it infrastructure for your copier... too much liability... but you want to be able to explain the problem to the customer so they can decide what they want to do and who to call...

now their is a way to do it by playing with routing tables in the routers... these are the tables that routers have that tell them what devices they have connected to and what their associated addresses are... -- above your paygrade

their is also a way to do it as mentioned above by connecting everyone to the same router or getting a bigger router and having everyone connect to that... -- above your paygrade...

as it for the copier you are responsible for the copier and its functionality... if within reason you cannot get it functioning as expected... it then falls on the inhouse IT person... if there is no inhouse IT person... then it falls on you with a nice fat fee per hour... and with the understanding that you will have to make changes to their network and you may even have to bring in your own outside contractor that the client will have to pay for... and with the understanding in writing ofcourse that if it all goes up someones nether regions your are not liable... because its their responsibility to make sure that they have the proper power outlets to fully power the copier and proper network support and layout to get fully utilize the desired copier features...

now you can try and bind multiple ip addresses to local computers and it might work but in my experience sooner or later the customer will find a way to undo it... because they interact with the computers all the time... it can turn into an unneeded headache... you might find yourself at the customer site every month fixing what they broke... believe you me... I have been there... so always try for the simplest solution... and teach the IT person how to resolve the issue and then you will find him to be your greatest ally atleast till they fire him or he moves on...

thats my working theory at the moment... always subject to change...

I really thank you for that. I feel like I'm bugging the shit out of you guys. You just cleared up a lot of things for me. To you more experienced guys, I'm sure this is basic stuff but for me not so much. It's becoming clear to me that I need to buy another router and play around with different configurations.

Thanks again!!!!

[n25an]

I really thank you for that. I feel like I'm bugging the shit out of you guys. You just cleared up a lot of things for me. To you more experienced guys, I'm sure this is basic stuff but for me not so much. It's becoming clear to me that I need to buy another router and play around with different configurations.

Thanks again!!!!

no one is trying to put you down... just giving you info so that when you screw up and you will... you will understand why...
its a right of passage man... like letting the smoke out of the board... sooner or later everyone does it...

remember home lab is your friend... and old stuff does not mean bad stuff... so get older things and make your lab... you might find a goldmine of stuff that your boss does not want but he will gladly give to you if you are trying to better yourself for the job...

also a rule of thumb... always ask the it guy to limit the range of ip addresses the network uses for dhcp... he will call it scope...
say you have an office with four computers... they don't need an ip address range that goes from 192.xxx.xxx.001 to 192.xxx.xxx.250... limit it to 50 possibilities so you might have something like 192.xxx.xxx.50 to 192.xxx.xxx.150 and the copiers ip address is 192.xxx.xxx.160 this way you don't have any ip conflicts...

next if a machine never leaves the office give it an ip address outside the range or reserve its ip address on the router... if it does leave the office... try and save scans to an office computer and share the folder of the scans to that mobile computer or sparing that... use hostnames for mobile computers... but keep in mind you will have to fix issues because the customer has a lot more time to mess up that computer... a better idea is to scan to email... this way you never have to touch the customers computer and they can access the email anywhere...

always try and use ip addresses whenever possible but make sure they are outside the dns range of ip addresses and keep that range reasonable... so talk to your customer's IT dept...

second dns always breaks... don't ask me why just accept it... and realize its like death and taxes... so try to rarely use hostnames but if you do... understand you will be back... sooner or later you will be back...

[BillyCarpenter]

no one is trying to put you down... just giving you info so that when you screw up and you will... you will understand why...
its a right of passage man... like letting the smoke out of the board... sooner or later everyone does it...

remember home lab is your friend... and old stuff does not mean bad stuff... so get older things and make your lab... you might find a goldmine of stuff that your boss does not want but he will gladly give to you if you are trying to better yourself for the job...

also a rule of thumb... always ask the it guy to limit the range of ip addresses the network uses for dhcp... he will call it scope...
say you have an office with four computers... they don't need an ip address range that goes from 192.xxx.xxx.001 to 192.xxx.xxx.250... limit it to 50 possibilities so you might have something like 192.xxx.xxx.50 to 192.xxx.xxx.150 and the copiers ip address is 192.xxx.xxx.160 this way you don't have any ip conflicts...

next if a machine never leaves the office give it an ip address outside the range or reserve its ip address on the router... if it does leave the office... try and save scans to an office computer and share the folder of the scans to that mobile computer or sparing that... use hostnames for mobile computers... but keep in mind you will have to fix issues because the customer has a lot more time to mess up that computer... a better idea is to scan to email... this way you never have to touch the customers computer and they can access the email anywhere...

always try and use ip addresses whenever possible but make sure they are outside the dns range of ip addresses and keep that range reasonable... so talk to your customer's IT dept...

second dns always breaks... don't ask me why just accept it... and realize its like death and taxes... so try to rarely use hostnames but if you do... understand you will be back... sooner or later you will be back...

I didn't think you were putting me down. Not at all. What I was trying to say is I feel like I ask a lot of dumb questions. I really appreciate your help.

[n25an]

I didn't think you were putting me down. Not at all. What I was trying to say is I feel like I ask a lot of dumb questions. I really appreciate your help.

its never a problem... all of us are glad to help...

[BillyCarpenter]

its never a problem... all of us are glad to help...

You mentioned using hostnames for mobile computers. I have a customer (a church) and they have laptops that they take home. I get calls from them and they tell me their laptop won't connect to the copier. What's the best solution for that?

[n25an]

You mentioned using hostnames for mobile computers. I have a customer (a church) and they have laptops that they take home. I get calls from them and they tell me their laptop won't connect to the copier. What's the best solution for that?

make sure they are logging into the right network..
once thats ok then

I would try these four strategies...

1. try sharing the printer to a computer nailed down at the church that is always on like a server... and then adding laptops to that share and see how it works...

2. try using the hostname of the printer when installing the printer driver on the laptops and see how that works...

3. verify that you are both speaking the same language... maybe they want to print over vpn
Printing Over VPN - 6 Workarounds to Try When on VPN | VPNpro

4 or you could try this... if there is a computer that is always on... you could set it up so that you have an email account that prints all emails that it gets to the printer via that computer...
How to Print Incoming Mail Automatically in Outlook

[slimslob]

I don't really understand how that works but I'll research it.

They had one router plugged into the other router...back to back. Like I said one was in the 192 range and the other in the 10 range.

Now that I think about, the purpose of a router is to make it possible for computers to communicate on different network ranges. If they were connected by, lets say a hub, then they couldn't communicate...I'm talking about the 2 network ranges, not the 2 routers. Is that right?

My guess from experience is that the 10. device was from their ISP and was a replacement for a device that had failed. The original ISP device did nor have WiFi so the customer installed a WiFi router, the 192. device.

[BillyCarpenter]

My guess from experience is that the 10. device was from their ISP and was a replacement for a device that had failed. The original ISP device did nor have WiFi so the customer installed a WiFi router, the 192. device.

Actually, this was at a used car lot. Both routers have WiFi. The 192 is from the internet service provider. The 10 is the router they purchased. The reason they set it up this way is so that their customers can log into the wireless network that the copier is on (and not the one their computers are on) so they could print out their documents that many have on their phone...apparently.

[slimslob]

You mentioned using hostnames for mobile computers. I have a customer (a church) and they have laptops that they take home. I get calls from them and they tell me their laptop won't connect to the copier. What's the best solution for that?

I know that Ricoh has cloud printing options for many of their MFP and I would think that all the other manufactures do as well just to be competitive.

[BillyCarpenter]

I know that Ricoh has cloud printing options for many of their MFP and I would think that all the other manufactures do as well just to be competitive.

Yeah, Kyocera has that but I haven't gotten into it yet. It's on the list.

Man, the copier game has changed since I was first in it. The sophistication of the MFP's have changed dramatically. Add in networking and you better know your stuff.

It's been said that you don't need to know much about networking to install a copier but I just can't agree with that. You may not need to know how to set up a server but there's a lot of potential pitfalls out there and you better know what you're doing. And if it's something wrong with their network, you better know how to explain it to the customer. I wasn't sure about that in the beginning. I am now.