Cannot PING Ad Hoc LAN NICs

1December2009

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 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

First of all you will need one wireless network card for each computer. Then set the SSID to something unique into the network card properties. This SSID should be having the same value on each machine otherwise network will not work properly.Then go into the network card properties and set a channel for the wireless network to use. This channel should be set to the same number on each machine. Select a static LAN IP on both computers. Be sure to put them on the same subnet and in the same IP range. Then set the network cards to run in "ad-hoc" mode, instead of infrastructure.

Disable "IEEE 802.1x authentication" first for the wireless connection. You need to make sure that your SSID has a unique name. If you are sure that your wireless is connecting, give it a few minutes before pinging and getting frustrated.

3December2009

Greetings.
Thanks for the replies; however, ...

1) First of all the question/posting concerns
PINGING over an Ad Hoc / router-less LAN not
setting up such a LAN - which, as I stated initially,
has already been done.

2) IEEE 802.1x authentication is not enabled.
The Authentication tab is greyed out & in fact says,
"IEEE 802 1x authentication can not operate on peer to
peer (ad hoc) networks or on networks for which data
encryption is disabled."

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

3December2009

Greetings.
Thanks for the replies; however, ...

1) First of all the question/posting concerns
PINGING over an Ad Hoc / router-less LAN not
setting up such a LAN - which, as I stated initially,
has already been done.

2) IEEE 802.1x authentication is not enabled.
The Authentication tab is greyed out & in fact says,
"IEEE 802 1x authentication can not operate on peer to
peer (ad hoc) networks or on networks for which data
encryption is disabled."

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

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