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Old July 13th 18, 10:19 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Arlen Holder
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Posts: 466
Default Noob networking question - why does \\DESKTOP\pubshare\readthis.txt not work but \\192.168.1.5\pubshare\readthis.txt work just fine?

On 13 Jul 2018 08:49:09 GMT, Arlen Holder wrote:

I'm always amazed at what people come up with when they don't really
understand how to do something.


BTW, do you have a *better* idea?

How would you connect a desktop that has only an Ethernet RJ45 to the
router, which is a bunch of floors away if you don't use WiFi (and if you
don't snake more than a hundred feet of Cat5 cable through the walls)?

And if you do use WiFi, bear in mind that you need to match or exceed my
signal strength, where a dinky USB dongle or puny WiFi card wouldn't have
even close to an order of magnitude the power of the solution I use now.

Besides the fact that the dinky little USB dongles don't have the decibels
needed, they are a pain anyway, because they break off as you walk by the
case (ask me how I know) - and they're omni besides, which is a supreme
waste of power when power is what you need and when they don't have much
power to start with.

A puny WiFi card plugged into the motherboard with a good external
directional antenna attached would work, but the solution I'm using is,
essentially, that anyway - and - it is far more powerful - hence fewer
dropped packets.

While a good WiFi card would likely work, the difference is that I already
have plenty of spare radios, which can all transmit at (or even over) the
legal limit if I wanted them to, so I have all the power I need to reach
anywhere with a strong signal (which means better bandwidth).

As you must be aware, the fewer dropped packets, the better the bandwidth,
where those of you who have access to cable ISPs don't need to care about
such things, but we who get our Internet out of the sky care about SNR,
CCQ, and dBm/dBi ERP.

*However, I'm always open to better, more powerful, free solutions.*

If you think you have a *better* idea, let me know, but your "better" idea
better have better signal strength and fewer dropped packets than mine does
in order to qualify as "better". And I get all that power for free besides.

The *only* drawback of my method, which I've been using for years, is that
I just noticed that the transceiver doesn't seem to be passing SMB Netbios
broadcasts.

I'm certainly not going to buy a puny WiFi card to get worse bandwidth just
to pass SMB broadcasts, since a single line in the LMHOSTS or HOSTS file
will solve the netbios issues.

In summary, if you have a *better* idea, then I'm all ears as I love good
ideas from people who are purposefully helpful.
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