"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a
little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you
run very fast for a long time as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen.
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running
you can do, to keep in the same place.
If you want to get somewhere else, you
must run at least twice as fast that!"
How The Network Kit Performed
After installing the network card into a PCI slot in each of the two test machines, I powered up the hub and booted into Windows 98. The cards on both machines were detected upon startup. Simply Plug 'N Play. As Windows 98 didn't have the drivers for the new card, I had to install the drivers given on the diskette. No problems there.
I proceeded to test the speed of the network through the process of transferring files and running multiplayer games. It took about 3 mins to transfer a 100MB file from one computer to the next. My old 10Mbps network was practically left in the dust with a good 7 mins left to transfer the same file.
I tried out MechWarrior 3 and Need for Speed 4 on a LAN connected multiplayer game. Game play was smooth on both computers and there wasn't a slightest evidence of lag on both machines.
Networking For The Power User
Given below are a few things you might want to try with your network. They are little known things but might aid you in your networking ventures.
Windows95/98 actually has its own "ICQ" for LANs. It's called Winpopup. Personally, I feel that it's quite useful for a school or Home Office LAN that doesn't use ICQ or a connection to the Internet. A couple of things to note though; NetBEUI has to be installed on all computers using Winpopup and of course, Winpopup has to be resident on the computers using the program.
The main reason behind networking is the ability to share files between the connected machines. Sharing files in Windows can be such a pain at times (I’m too used to FTP-ing). First, you need to right click on selected folders on computer A to enable sharing. After which you go over to computer B to copy the file and finally run back to “unshare” the folders on A. What a hassle it can be!
Another peeve is that after you share folders on A and want to transfer files to it from B, you realise that the folders on A are set to Read-Only! Bummer.
Don't fret. There’s a nifty little tool hidden in Windows95/98 called Netwatcher. It can be accessed from Control panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Windows Setup -> Accessories (win95) System tools (Win98). Many of us don't really know how to utilize it or just give it a dismissing click of the mouse.
Before you can use it, you must enable Remote Administration on the networked computers. This can be found in Control Panel -> Passwords -> Remote Administration. Make sure the "Enable Remote Administration of this server" is checked for the the computers in the network.
Next, go to Network Neighbourhood, right click the desired computer and select Properties.
Net Watcher is smack right on the screen for you to click.
After running the program, go to View -> by shared folders.
Under the Administer menu, you can add new folders to share. You can also change the properties of current folders being shared. There are also other options for you to tinker with. This should ease your work a little.
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