Setting up windows p2p software
I'm trying to set up my Airport Extreme for use with both macs and windows machines on my network and I think I'm missing a trick.
On the windows machines (XP Pro) I set them up to use DHCP to get the networking information from the Airport--it works pretty well. However, the IP addresses assigned occasionally change, so port forwarding from the Airport to the PC only works until the next reboot or the IP address lease expires. Consequently, every time the power goes out its time to set everything up again.
The usual workaround for this would be to manually configure the IP addresses on the windows PCs. Unfortunately, if you manually configure the IP addresses then Windows doesn't fetch the DNS information from the Airport and the machine can't resolve names on the Internet. I tried working around this by making the Airport the default gateway and DNS server--that works okay for Linux boxes but it didn't work reliably with Windows XP.
The solution I've used in the past with other routers (e.g. D-Link and Linksys) is to use DHCP to consistently map the same computer to the same IP address based on the MAC address. The Airport has an option to do this for wireless clients, but not for wired clients. I suppose I could put wireless cards in the PC servers, but I prefer wired interfaces for latency and reliability reasons.
Windows XP supports uPnP, so I tried that. But apparently the Airport Extreme doesn't support uPnP so that didn't work out. The new Airport Extreme (n) router has some sort of functionally equivalent feature, but I don't know whether it would work with Windows XP. And in any case, I don't want to run out and buy another piece of computer hardware for what appears to be such a simple problem.
I've found this problem annoying for things like sharing printers, but it really brings everything to a screeching halt for P2P software since there is no way to know ahead of time which incoming ports will be used and must therefore be forwarded to the PCs. I suppose I could put the windows PC in a DMZ, but I don't think it would survive long without the firewall protection of the Airport to protect it against hackers.
I've searched the support docs available on this site and found only one doc that even mentions p2p software, and that is for the Mac OS X server--buying an OS X server would be complete overkill for my needs.
Does anyone have a simple/cheap workaround that would allow me to reliably use p2p software from a PC on the inside of the Airport firewall?
Thanks,
- Mike
iMac G4 USB, iMac Mini Mac OS X (10.4.7) Palm, iPod mini, iPod nano, Logitech Trackman
On the windows machines (XP Pro) I set them up to use DHCP to get the networking information from the Airport--it works pretty well. However, the IP addresses assigned occasionally change, so port forwarding from the Airport to the PC only works until the next reboot or the IP address lease expires. Consequently, every time the power goes out its time to set everything up again.
The usual workaround for this would be to manually configure the IP addresses on the windows PCs. Unfortunately, if you manually configure the IP addresses then Windows doesn't fetch the DNS information from the Airport and the machine can't resolve names on the Internet. I tried working around this by making the Airport the default gateway and DNS server--that works okay for Linux boxes but it didn't work reliably with Windows XP.
The solution I've used in the past with other routers (e.g. D-Link and Linksys) is to use DHCP to consistently map the same computer to the same IP address based on the MAC address. The Airport has an option to do this for wireless clients, but not for wired clients. I suppose I could put wireless cards in the PC servers, but I prefer wired interfaces for latency and reliability reasons.
Windows XP supports uPnP, so I tried that. But apparently the Airport Extreme doesn't support uPnP so that didn't work out. The new Airport Extreme (n) router has some sort of functionally equivalent feature, but I don't know whether it would work with Windows XP. And in any case, I don't want to run out and buy another piece of computer hardware for what appears to be such a simple problem.
I've found this problem annoying for things like sharing printers, but it really brings everything to a screeching halt for P2P software since there is no way to know ahead of time which incoming ports will be used and must therefore be forwarded to the PCs. I suppose I could put the windows PC in a DMZ, but I don't think it would survive long without the firewall protection of the Airport to protect it against hackers.
I've searched the support docs available on this site and found only one doc that even mentions p2p software, and that is for the Mac OS X server--buying an OS X server would be complete overkill for my needs.
Does anyone have a simple/cheap workaround that would allow me to reliably use p2p software from a PC on the inside of the Airport firewall?
Thanks,
- Mike
iMac G4 USB, iMac Mini Mac OS X (10.4.7) Palm, iPod mini, iPod nano, Logitech Trackman
