Help with using Livebox as internet gateway for home network (Apple & desktop)

bgscotty

Hello!

I'd appreciate a little more advice regarding using Livebox as a home internet gateway in setting up a network.

Thanks to great previous help on here, I have successfully connected an Apple wirelessly to the Livebox via its Airport- obviously on the MAC OS.

The Apple also has a Windows partition with XP Home OS.

I am now being prompted, on the XP OS side, to create its internet connection for the first time.

Do I treat the XP OS side of the Apple as a separate standalone desktop and follow standard instructions on connecting an XP OS to the Livebox wirelessly?


There is also a desktop pc (XP Home OS) already with a wired connection to the Livebox.

The prompt is the standard "internet connection/ username/ password" one which, I assume, would have to relate to the Livebox details used to connect by the desktop pc.

This doesn't seem correct- even to a dimwit like me- as this surely would mean that the Apple, in effect, will be connected twice to the Livebox wirelessly (on both the MAC OS side and the XP side) rather than as one unit?

I get the bit about how the Apple connects wirelessly to the Livebox (to access the internet) via its Airport, but I'm not sure why or how the XP side gets connected on its own, separately.

I'm going to do the jiggery pokery soon to set up a home network with a desktop pc (XP OS) and the Apple (MAC OS) and share files/ printer- and I know how to do this thankfully! :T



Finally, will the desktop pc, with its wired connection to the Livebox, act as the entry point to the whole network, so allowing it to protect the network with any security keys, firewalls to be set up?

If not, is there any way I can achieve this?



Many thanks for your advice in advance.

Scotty

isofa

Congrats on getting this far!

Yes, you treat the XP side of the Mac separately if it's setup as a separate boot partition in Boot Camp / under Leopard. When you boot into into XP, it's just like you've set-up a brand new XP PC, it has no idea of any of the Mac OS X settings, nor can it access them. It's essentially two different computers in one.)

(However ,if you are running XP on the Mac in virualisation using Parallels or VMWare, it's slightly different and can hop onto the Mac connection.)

I don't know enough about the Livebox to answer your security question, but I'd ensure both the Mac and PCs firewalls are running and active, just like you would do if you were connecting with a standard internet router. I suspect the Livebox offers a gateway type connection to the internet similar to a router...

bgscotty

Hello!

Thanks again isofa!

Perhaps someone could tell me why the firewall on the LAN (when I view network connections on my XP desktop) switches itself on and off?

Each time I log into my pc, I have to switch on the firewall to the LAN again, even though I have done this repeatedly and ticked the "no exceptions" button...

Maybe relevant- I have the personal firewall option clicked to "on" within my Norton Anti-virus... Could this be automatically switching off the Windows firewall protecting the LAN?

Thank you in advance.

Scotty

isofa

You can't have two firewalls running on Windows (on the same PC) at the same time. So Norton's firewall, when on, will disable the Windows firewall.

If you are happy with Norton stick with it, else you could try ZoneAlarm or Comodo, all are much better than the built in Windows firewall.

Nikolai

bgscotty wrote: »

Finally, will the desktop pc, with its wired connection to the Livebox, act as the entry point to the whole network, so allowing it to protect the network with any security keys, firewalls to be set up?

If not, is there any way I can achieve this?

Scotty

Re your above question, no, it won't. Each PC connects to the livebox separately. This is shown by the fact that you can leave the wired PC switched off and connect through the laptop/any other PC.

This means that each PC needs its own security set up, with firewall, anti virus, anti spyware etc.