Cannot PING Ad Hoc LAN NICs

[AEN007]

3December2009

Greetings.

I have three (3) XP laptops & would like to be able to use

intranet time sync utilities but at the moment cannot at all

because at the moment I can not PING at all -

with one minor exception. I have seemingly lost the ability

to PING any NICs.

Recently I could PING between laptop G & laptop T - both directions.

I could also PING between laptop i & laptop T - both directions.

I can no longer PING amongst the latops except when I activate

the Direct Cable Parallel Port Connection between T & i.

Laptops T & i both have XPPro. Laptop G has XPHome.

I do not use Simple File Sharing on laptops T & i.

I network the laptops with varying NICs depending on

what type of internet connections I have to use.

At the moment I have two ethernet connections -

one on G & one on i. I always connect G & i

with USB bridge/network cable. Right now I use a pcmcia wLAN NIC

on laptop T to connect T to G & i, so I have a redundant connection

between G & i.

1) Is there any way to connect T with I & G via wlan

but not also connect I & G via the ad hoc connections?

It seems to me that the problem is not the free ZoneAlarm firewall.

Until this week I could make the above PING connections

between G & T and T & i. I have never (not yet anyway)

been able to PING over the USB bridge/network cable

between G & i. Because T is almost never connected to the internet,

I uninstalled (& then reinstalled) ZoneAlarm on T; however,

uninstalling ZoneAlarm did not allowing any PINGing to or from T.

Activating the DCPPC between I & T for some unknown reason

enables pinging between I & T over the DCPPC.

XP assigns the DCPPCs a subnet mask of 255.255.255.255,

which I thought was "illegal" ...

I could go on & on with details, but for now I'll just hope that someone

will reply & eventually help me restore PINGing over my Ad Hoc LAN.

2) I cannot start remoteaccess on I; however,

I can start remoteaccess on T.

G does not list remoteaccess as a service option.

I & T have parallel & serial ports. G does not.

At a minimum I would like to "ping" between I & T.

T is usually never connected to the internet,

so I would like to use intranet time sync utilities

between I & T.

Enabling the direct cable / parallel port connection

between I & T (I as guest & T as host) allows

pinging between the I & T DCPPC IP addresses

(but not the wLAN IP addresses ...).

Most of my LAN traffic goes from I to G & I to T,

so I set up the DCPPC with T as host.

Previously I could not set up a guest DCPPC on T

but could start remoteaccess on I. Now I cannot

start remoteaccess on I but yesterday was able

to setup a guest DCPPC on T. I could use intranet

time sync between I & T when a DCPPC would be active.

I cannot, however, have the DCPPC where T is host

because all traffic from I would go over not only

the wLAN connection but also the DCPPC,

which causes T CPU usage to go to 100%.

If I could (once again) start remoteaccess on I,

then I could activate T as a guest. Then there would be

an active DCPPC but traffic from I to T would only go

over the wLAN connection. I found/tried 2 proposed

solutions to the remoteaccess "won't start" problem,

but neither worked for me.

I tried the Winsock reset procedures -

at first on the 2 XP-Pro laptops (T & I).

Immediately afterwards I had partial ping success.

The partial ping success lasted about 30 minutes.

After the XPP winsock resets, I could ping all the wlan

connections but still not the usbnetz connections.

I had to make some nic readjustments which maybe killed

the partial ping success. I don't now why the reset on the

2 XPP laptops (I & T) allowed pinging the untouched

XPH laptop (G). It might be that installing the usbnetz

connections somehow impedes the pinging. If so, I don't

know why. The "networking" works fine. Each connection

reads & writes both directions without problems.

The XP "Search for Computers" finds all computers, but

I still cannot ping any connections.

Any helpful replies/insights appreciated.

Thank you.

Regards,

AEN

Æ

P.S.:

The PING error message is almost always,

"Request timed out" not "Destination host unreachable" ...

For some unknown reason today I successfully pinged

(for the first time ever) to a USBnetz IP address -

however, only one way. For some unknown reason

I could not ping back to the other USBnetz address ...

No other pinging (except the DCPPC described already) works ...

Any helpful replies/insights appreciated.

Thank you.

Regards,

AEN

Æ

[AEN007]

5December2009

Greetings.

I am VERY HAPPY & RELIEVED to say that

I have finally actualy hacked my way through

this Network/Ping labyrinth and now seem to have

a fully functioning PINGABLE XP Ad Hoc LAN.

Regards,

AEN

Æ