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Thread ID: 85336 2007-12-07 02:30:00 Crossover or normal, Cat5e or cat6? Tukapa (62) Press F1
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618583 2007-12-07 02:30:00 Hi all

I have just bought a Maxtor Shared Storage II 320GB Hard Drive/Nas. It has one ethernet plug and two USB 2.0 plugs.

I bought a standard 5 port 10/100/1000 switch.

I want to plug two laptops into the switch and was wondering do I do this with a normal or crossover cable, and cat5e or cat6?

Also want to have the Maxtor plugged into the switch as a shared drive for both laptops.

The printer is plugged into the Maxtor via USB 2.0.

Thanks. 		Tukapa (62)
618584 2007-12-07 02:33:00 Cat5e or Cat6, wont matter.. Cat6 is primarily used for high speed (gigabit+) networks. Either will work fine.

You want a Patch (Normal) LAN cable, the Crossovers are generally used for linking one PC to another, or one switch to another without an uplink port.. 		Chilling_Silence (9)
618585 2007-12-10 08:44:00 Thanks.

What I have done is this:

Plugged one cat5e patch cable into the laptop and the other end into the switch.
Plugged one cat5e patch cable into the NAS and the other end into the switch.
Plugged the laser printer into the NAS via USB.

Problem:
When set up this way the laptop cannot find the NAS.

However, if I plug the cat5e patch cable directly into the NAS from the laptop (ignoring the switch) then it finds and recognises the NAS and the printer is recognised also.

Have tried changing cables etc but no luck with that.

A direct connection from laptop to NAS via cat5e works but bypassing through the switch does not. I need to use the switch as I am going to hook another laptop up to the NAS so both can use it as a shared system drive and both can access and print form the printer plugged into the NAS.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance. 		Tukapa (62)
618586 2007-12-10 08:53:00 Just guessing here (never had anything to do with NAS) but it sounds like an IP, or subnet problem. Is the switch handing out different IP's or something? Myth (110)
618587 2007-12-10 09:02:00 Do you have a broadband router or perhaps some other server/device attached to the switch that could be acting as a DHCP server?
I think most NAS devices have a DHCP server built in so that is why it works when you connect it directly to the laptop.
The laptop will be getting an IP address from the NAS in the correct subnet.

The other device attached to the switch may be giving out IP addresses in a different subnet to the NAS so the laptop won't see it.

You would need to disable one of the DHCP servers and then manually set that device to an IP address to match the network IP addresses/subnet of the DHCP server that is still running. 		CYaBro (73)
618588 2007-12-10 09:14:00 There is nothing else attached to the switch other than what I have described above.

There is a wireless internet connection to the laptop in the office.

This sounds a bit more technical than the plug and play I was hoping for with a simple switch and wired network!!!

Would a router be beter than a switch - although I was of the understanding that a switch should be able to pull this configuration off.

Cheers. 		Tukapa (62)
618589 2007-12-10 09:15:00 If its similar to this (the-gadgeteer.com)

It says you have to install the software, on all computers, if there's more than 1 computer.

Did u do this?

Even tho the above is a Mac. 		Speedy Gonzales (78)
618590 2007-12-10 18:22:00 What you need to do is, while the NAS is connected directly to the laptop, go to a command prompt and run

ipconfig /all

And do the same with the laptop and NAS attached to the switch.
Post the results here and and we'll take a look.

Also, what is the IP address of the NAS and the wireless internet router? 		CYaBro (73)
618591 2007-12-10 19:07:00 If the switch is, in fact, just a switch, it won't be acting as a DHCP server or anything like that.

So it SHOULDN'T make any difference. Are you sure it's just a basic switch? 		george12 (7)
618592 2007-12-10 21:42:00 you guys may be overcomplicating this.

If the NAS plugs directly into the Laptop ok & so does the switch, then they are the same connection and probably need a crossover between the switch and the NAS.

Simple question:
Is the green light ( or orange whatever ) on on the switch for both ports ( pc and NAS )

The only way plugging through the switch would cause network configuration issues is if there are other devices connected as well, such as a DHCP server etc, causing address conflicts 		dugimodo (138)
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