Setting up your physical network

Make sure you have a working Internet connection on one of your computers. Log on to the Internet and verify that the Internet is working through your browser application. The examples below show a basic Cable or DSL Modem configuration while the example on the right shows a standard Dial-Up Modem configuration. 

Install a network card into your computer for your local area network (LAN). If you already have a Ethernet card for your Cable or DSL configuration as shown above, you'll need to install a second network card for the local area network. The two network cards do not have to be the same brand or type. Sybergen software supports several types of network cards including HomePNA, Wireless, and Ethernet.

The examples below show the Internet connected computer with a Ethernet card for local area networking. 

Make sure that you have a network card installed on each computer you want to share Internet access with. Below is an example of a second computer with a Ethernet network card installed. It is a good idea to run any network diagnostics software which may have come with your network card prior to wiring your network. The wiring for the example below connecting two computers is called a Ethernet "cross-over" cable. A "cross-over" cable is different than a standard Ethernet cable. 

If using more than two computers for your LAN, you will need a "network hub" and standard Ethernet cables. An example of a three computer network is shown below. If connecting multiple computers to a hub, don't use the "uplink" port of the hub (if this port exists on your hub, it's usually used to connect multiple hubs or for other devices).

It is also a good idea to run any diagnostics programs that may have come with your network cards prior to installing our software to make sure your hardware is operating properly. Check with the materials that came with your network interface card for details.

Verifying your physical network is working.

Most Ethernet network cards and hubs have lights where the network cables plug into them. In most cases, if these lights are green when turning on all of the equipment (including the network hub) then your equipment is working. If this does not work for a network card or the port on the hub where the network cable is plugged in, consult with your vendor for more detailed troubleshooting information.

Installing the Server software.

Copy the installation program to the hard drive of the system that is connected to the Internet, then perform the following steps to install the Server software…

• Close all running applications, then double click on the installation program.

• Start the installation program and the program files will be copied to your system.

• A menu will ask you if you wish to install this product in "Client" or "Server" mode. For this first computer, you should select "Server".

• The diagnosis will then verify your network settings are working and that you have a working Internet connection and alert you if any known problems are found. 

• Once the diagnosis is successful, the "Finish" button will be available to press. When this happens, press the "Finish" button. You will then need to restart your computer to successfully use our software.

Setting up your systems to communicate via TCP/IP

If everything is working as described above and our software has been successfully installed, you've done a good job so far. The next step is setting up communication between your computers. There are two ways we recommend to do this... 

Automatic Configuration - Use our software to assign networking settings to each computer automatically. This is preferred if you do not already have a functioning TCP/IP network or just quickly want to get your network running. 

Manual Configuration - Go to each computer and set the various TCP/IP networking parameters manually. This is preferred if you already have a working network and are adding our gateway software to your LAN. 

Automatic Configuration

By default, our software will set the following TCP/IP settings on the server computer. If you do not want to use these settings, go to the Manual Configuration section of this document.

Open the Access Manager or SyGate Manager program. It will display the manager programs main screen. From this screen, go to the "Tools" menu and select the "Configuration …" option.

The configuration screen allows you to select the type of Internet connection or which Dial-Up connection you want to use. Under Options, make sure the option for "Enable Built-in DHCP Server" is selected. After verifying this, click "OK" to close this dialog box. Server configuration is now complete.

Preparing your other computers.

Now that you have the Server software installed and running, you need to make sure that the other computers on your network are configured properly to obtain their settings automatically from the Server.

Open the Network Control Panel on the other computers and select the TCP/IP Properties for the network interface. Set the option to "obtain an IP address automatically" as shown below then select the "OK" button to close the dialog box. Select "OK" again from the Network control panel to close and save your settings. Your computer should then prompt you to restart for these settings to take effect. 

Once restarted, the client computer should obtain it's settings automatically and able to communicate on the Internet. Go to verifying installation to check that everything is working okay.

Manual Configuration

Setting the TCP/IP settings Manually

Following is a diagram of recommended TCP/IP settings. You can use these or you can use your own. 

If you elect to use your own defined settings we recommend using TCP/IP settings reserved by the Internet Address and Numbering Authority (IANA). These ranges have been reserved as a standard for private networks (RFC1918). The network ranges defined in this standard that you can use are as follows:

In our example above, these are the computer settings we recommend for the CLIENT computers...

• Gateway: 192.168.0.1

• DNS: 192.168.0.1

• Set IP address as 192.168.0.2 (192.168.0.3, 192.168.0.4, ... for each individual client machines respectively).

• Set Network Mask: 255.255.255.0

• Set Host Name to any name, but different from others

• Disable WINS resolution

• Leave ‘Domin Name’ empty

to set these parameters on each client, go to the Network Control Panel and select TCP/IP for the network interface card for your local network. If you are using a cable modem or DSL connection, do not edit the properties for the network interface card used for the Internet connection. Then click on the TCP/IP Properties button. An example of the Network Control Panel is shown below. 

From the TCP/IP Properties screen, verify that "Specify an IP address" is selected and enter the IP Address (i.e. 192.168.0.2) and Subnet Mask (i.e. 255.255.255.0) as shown below. Then set the GATEWAY and DNS settings to be the IP address of the server computer (i.e. 192.168.0.1). Then select the "OK" button to close this dialog box, then select "OK" again from the Network Control Panel to close and save your settings. Make sure that the subnet mask for each computer is the same and that the IP address for each computer is in the same range but each address is unique. See the table above as reference.

Your computer should then prompt you to restart for these settings to take effect. Your computer must be restarted for the changes to work.

Verifying Installation

To find out whether or not your client computers have valid TCP/IP parameters, you can use 'ipconfig.exe' (Win98/NT) and 'winipcfg.exe' on Win95/98. This utility will tell you what TCP/IP parameters are assigned to each PC. By default, the client computers will be assigned 192.168.0.2, 192.168.0.3, 192.168.0.4, ... for each individual client computer respectively.

The most important parameter setting is the Gateway parameter in TCP/IP. If it is not set correctly, the sharing through our software will not work. 

To verify the gateway on your client computers, open a MS-DOS box on each client and type ‘route print’. If you don’t see the line ‘0.0.0.0  0.0.0.0  192.168.0.1  192.168.0.2 1’, your gateway is not right.

Given that the Server PC has the IP address 192.168.0.1 and a Client PC has the IP address 192.168.0.2...

On the Client PC, open a DOS box by clicking ‘Start->Run’, then type ‘command’. Type ‘ping 192.168.0.1’ at the DOS prompt. 

You should get the following:

C:\WIN95>ping 192.168.0.1

Pinging 192.168.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128

Open a DOS box from the Server. Type ‘ping 192.168.0.2’. You should get a response from it as well. If not, your TCP/IP network is not working. You should check cable, connectors, network card driver, and whether or not you can share files between the computers by using other protocols such as NetBEUI and IPX. If you can share files or printers between the Server and Client computer, it at least proves that the cable and network cards are functioning.

Our most frequently seen problems include: loose connectors, using wrong connectors on hubs (uplink), and corrupted networking software files (network card drivers or TCP/IP).

The following items may fix problem(s):

• Check the cable, connector, connection

• Remove TCP/IP, reboot, and perform a re-install

• Remove the network cards driver(s) and re-install

• For NT, re-install any service packs being used

• For Windows 95/98, check for any system updates

If it fails to ping from Server to Client, find out if it works from Client to Client or from Server to a different Client. This will help you to locate the problem.

At this point, we have our software running and the Server communicates with it's clients in TCP/IP. Now we want to see if we can share the modem on the Server from a Client.

On the Client, open a DOS box. Type ‘ping 192.41.60.149’ at the DOS prompt. If you get valid response from these sites, you know our software is working. 

For Dial-up users: If you don’t get valid response but you can hear the modem on PC-A starting to dial, you might want to try the ping command after the connection to your ISP is established. If you don’t hear the modem dialing, you may need to check the gateway setting on the client to make sure it's set to use the Server's IP address.

If you can get response from ‘ping 192.41.60.149’, you then can try ‘ping www.sybergen.com’. If you got a previous response but don’t get response here, it is very likely that the DNS parameter on the Client isn’t working. You can try to use the DNS from your ISP on the Client. To find out your ISP’s DNS, you can take a look at the DNS entry for the TCP/IP properties of the Internet adapter on the Server. If it is not listed there, you should contact your ISP for these settings. 

Starting from SyGate 2.0 build 312, there is a ‘Troubleshooting’ tab on the SyGate Manager or Access Server window. It displays the contents of our software's log files. If you have questions for either of these products and need email support, please include the contents of the ‘TroubleShooting’ screen in the email.