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Reference Manual |
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HOW TO configure the machines behind NAT32:
There are two ways to configure the client machines:
DHCP Configuration
This is by far the easiest solution, and is done as follows:
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Configure each machine to "Obtain an IP address automatically" by opening
Control Panel Network and then clicking the Properties of the TCP/IP Protocol
for the relevant Adapter. Then select the IP Address tab and click the
appropriate radio button.
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When the machine is rebooted, it will obtain all the needed settings from
the NAT32 DHCP server. If that server isn't running, then Windows 98 will
assign a temporary private IP address to the machine.
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Note that when NAT32 isn't running, that machine will not be able to communicate
with the NAT32 machine, unless you used a private IP address on the NAT32
machine which belongs to the 169.254.0.0 subnet.
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For further details on the NAT32 DHCP server please click here.
Manual Configuration
This method is also straight-forward, but requires that you understand
the basic principles of the Domain Name Service.
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Let us assume your private LAN Adapter on the NAT32 machine is configured
as follows:
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Windows IP address: 172.16.2.1
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Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
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No Gateway
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In this case, NAT32 will have automatically selected the IP address 172.16.2.254
for its TCP/IP stack on that adapter. This address will appear in the bottom-right
corner of the NAT32 Console.
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The client machines would then need to be configured as follows:
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IP Address: 172.16.2.x, where x is any unique value
except: 0, 1, 100 or 255.
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Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
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Gateway: 172.16.2.254 (and no others)
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DNS Address: 172.16.2.254 (plus any others, as long as they are valid)
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DNS Domain Name: same as your ISP's Domain Name. For example, if your ISP
is www.xyz.com, then the Domain Name is xyz.com.
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Host Name: anything you like. For example: if you call your machine machine2,
then its fully qualified name will become machine2.xyz.com, although
this name is bogus and no DNS server will be able to resolve it.
The DNS Address specified above (172.16.2.254) is the same as NAT32's private
IP address. But note that NAT32 is not a DNS server, it simply forwards
any DNS requests it receives to the actual DNS server which the
machine on which it runs has been configured to use.
NAT32 obtains the actual DNS server address from Windows in one
of two ways:
-
If the registered interface on the NAT32 machine is Windows DHCP configured,
the first DNS address is extracted from the DNS address list supplied
by the DHCP protocol.
-
Otherwise, NAT32 uses the first fixed DNS address you configured
using Control Panel Network.
Note that DNS servers sometimes go down. In such cases, the ISP's DHCP
server should automatically detect this and not supply the address of any
faulty DNS Servers to DHCP clients. But most ISPs don't know how to set
this up correctly and it can happen that the DNS address which NAT32 uses
just happens to be that faulty one.
If NAT32 ever uses a faulty DNS address, your client machines
will seem to have lost Internet connectivity, because names won't resolve.
When this happens, simply open the NAT32 Console and then click Config
followed by Global Settings. You can then change the DNS address
to which NAT32 forwards DNS requests. the change comes into effect immediately,
you do not need to restart NAT32. Of course, if needed, you can
always specify any desired DNS address in your netcfg files.
SEE ALSO
config,
dhcpd,
netcfg,
ns,
ping,
setd,
setns
