I do not know whether I should ask this question under Windows 98SE or XP Pro networking, because I may upgrade to XP Pro and then first connect 1 XP Pro PC to 1 Windows 98SE PC. The basic issue is that my previous setup trying to connect 2 Windows 98SE PCs as fast as possible, while PC#1 also accesses the Internet, did not work reliably. Worse than that, it was totally impossible to find the real cause of the flaky, on-and-off functionality.
I use Optimum Online, which is a very fast ISP. Of the 2 PCs only PC#1 is always on the Internet, PC#2 is there for backup and instant recall, because I have so much stuff in my work, that if PC#1 fails, I can't remember the setups, passwords etc. With PC#2 running the precisely same setup, I was always able to instantly debug everything, also test suspect hardware instantly. But my ISP does not support anything other that a direct RJ45 connection from their cable modem into my NIC. Therefore, I went through the weirdest gyrations to get these 2 PCs connected without either a hub or a router. I first had 2 NICs in PC#1, one for the Internet and one to connect to PC#2, but the problems were just so bad that I took the second NIC out. This meant that I had to go through a weekly ritual of rebooting PC#1 so that it would not obtain an IP address automatically, but assign one close to the one permanently set at PC#2.
The errors I got and the different ways in which the system hung were terrific. But I do not understand why a single crossover RJ45 cable between 2 NICs can't connect the 2 PCs, regardless whether there is another NIC in PC#1 which receives the Internet from that fickle ISP.
Of course, when you call warehouse.com they claim that their routers do all of the above just fine, until you learn the lame speeds, which would force me to wait for hours for gigabytes of data to be transferred to PC#2. Warehouse.com also cannot answer the loss of bandwidth and burden from overhead of their wonderful router.
But the problems I had with 2 NICs in a single PC were just stunning. Sometimes the network would connect right away, then it would not see anything on the network, not even itself! But then you reboot and the network is up and running at full speed as if nothing had ever happened. Then again, randomly, it would not work, no matter how often you changed the IP address on both PCs and rebooted, but if you pulled the RJ45 connector out of the NIC and put it back in and rebooted, it was suddenly all back and worked so well, that you did not have the slightest clue as to what you could have done differently to make it run in a stable fashion.
AND THAT IS MY BASIC QUESTION: What is a stable and recommended way to connect 2PCs in a setup as I am describing above?
I was given hundreds of explanations, especially that I was using for PC#1 an ASUS A7M266 Socket A motherboard with an AMD 761 chipset with an Athlon 1.4GHz CPU, which was allegedly notorious for networking incompatibilities. I could never figure this out, and since I still am in a lot of financial trouble, having to develop something rather complex with which I will hopefully get a job again, I had to let this go.
But now that I am getting new hardware once again, I am afraid that this may continue. Am I misguided in the assumption that I should at least according to the literature be able to go downstream from PC#1 to PC#2 via crossover cable and that 2 NICs ought not to create problems if their use does not interfere with each other? By that I mean that I as a single user do only one thing at a time, whereby 99.99% of the time I work with the Internet and only when the time comes to back everything up, I shoot something over to PC#2. And if I erase an important file in error, I go to PC#2 and look whether I can find that file in the stacked backups. I mean, is this so exotic and unusual that I am inviting once again a source of unexplained system hang-ups etc.? Should I go with a router and give up that raw speed – and consider that the gigabit crossover cable runs at speeds in excess of 600 Mbits/second? Or should I put dedicated Firewire 1394b at speeds of up to 800 Mbits/second in those 2 PCs and only one NIC in PC#1? Would that be more stable?
Thank you very much in advance.
Sincerely,
Bernard
