Network problems

[Bill Stanley]

On 12/25/2010 10:10 PM, Lucio M Nicolosi wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 8:46 PM, Bill Stanley<bstanle at wowway.com>  wrote:
>>
>> There is the possibility of a hardware problem but wouldn't there be
>> other problems?  Other than connections from the two computers, I have
>> encountered no other problems.  I can access the Internet (without any
>> hint of problems) from both computers.  Nonetheless, I will try using
>> different cabling and router ports to see if that makes any difference.
>
> By the way, are you pinging the IP address or the workstation hostname?

OK, I the madness of the holiday is over and I can concentrate on this 
problem...

To restate what I have said before...

Computer 1 is a Dell Studio-XPS 64 bit, i7 processor with 8 GByte of 
RAM.  It is running Unbuntu 10.10 (Maverick Merecat) 64 bit version. 
The desktop version was installed and it was first installed 6 months ago.

Computer 2 is quite old and is a Dell Dimension 4600 with a Pentium 4 
processor and 4 Gbyte of RAM.  (Although is is quite old it still is 
useful.)  This is the computer with the problem,

The network hardware:
I switched the cable ports on the router and switched the Ethernet cable
for computer two to a new cable that I am sure is good.  result, no 
change.  If there is a hardware problem, it would be in the computer 
itself.  since I can access the Internet without any problems.  To sum 
up, I doubt it is a hardware problem.

The ping problem:
When I use computer two to ping computer one I get some strange results.
If I specify computer one using its ip address (192.168.1.100) I fet a 
ping back with an average time of 0.27 ms.  If I specify the computers 
name (aragorn), sending a ping yields a time of 35.66 ms,  It's 
suprising that it would be this much slower.  Maybe if I specify the 
name, it is actually pinging some other computer (computer one has a 
common name).   Sending a ping from computer one to computer two yields 
nothing both for the ip-address (192.168.1.101) and the computers name.

The file sharing:
I can't get a usable connection,  On looking at the /etc/samba log files 
I can see that there is some indication that a connection was attempted 
but the attempt failed. On both computers, the documents folder is 
shared but the shares-admin program allows only sharing via  Unix-nfsm, 
there ore no other choices even though there should samba listed (I 
think).  Frankly, I don't think shares-admin is very good.


Using the Places/network desktop menu item on computer one the following 
are the results.
1. When I attempt to open a Windows network connection (NFS unix is not 
one of the choices)
2. When I open the windows network icon, I see nothing.  This is 
interesting because yesterday, I could see the name of my home network.
In this respect, I have taken a step backwards,  I used to get an error 
message saying that the shares list was not sent.  The same situation is 
seen when I try to use computer rwo to connect to computer one.

I hesitate to add the ancient (12 years old) computer to the mix.  Both
computers dual boot and I can boot on computer one to Windows 7, 
Open-Suse or Unbuntu,  I almost exclusively use Unbuntu and I keep Win7 
around just because it came pre-installed with it.  Computer two can 
boot to Windows XP (Service pack 2) or Unbuntu.  I might try to 
establish a network connection when computer two is booted to Win-XP. 
If I can get a connection,I can at least rule out hardware problems.