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Networking FSX Computer with laptop


kiwi stu

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I have watched a few YouTube vids on this and it doesn't seem to hard.

One question I have for anybody who has done this

Do I connect my computers together with a USB cord ?

I realise I have to make a home group the same for each computer,but obviously I am not going to rely on wifi

Any body help ?

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USB cord wont work. Your computer is a "client" and the laptop is a "client". You must have some sort of "server" between them, in your case, a communications server. This "server" could actually be a hub (not really a server) if you are setting up a peer-to-peer network. The hub could be wireless or wired (or a combination of both). The wire is Ethernet (as opposed to the USB cable you are proposing), and is sometimes referred to as cat 5, the plug being RJ45.


 


This is just a short "NO" answer. Others who have actually constructed a home FSX network can tell you what they did.


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Thanks for that..yeah some of the vids talk about an Ethernet connection.i have actually got a long Ethernet cord..but need to know what to do with it?

Eg..plug it into my internet wifi router and the other end into what ??.. My laptop or my fsx PC .

I am imagining that the 2 computers need to be connected..so Ethernet between my 2 computers,and another Ethernet connect to router ??

You know..maybe this not the place for this..I might drive down to my local computer store and have a chat

Cheers stu

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Hey Stu

 

If you have both PC's internet cabled into a router I can show you how, no USB required. Just open up "Network and Sharing Center", then click on "Local Area Connection", then click on "Properties", then click highlight the "internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" and click on "Properties", then click on the "Alternate Configuration" tab, now select the "User Configured" bullet, now just enter any set of numbers for an "IP address" and it will auto generate a "Subnet mask", so for example as you can see my main PC Alternate Configured IP address is 123.255.101.1..now do this exact process to your laptop except make the final number on it's Alternate Configured IP address a 2 instead of a 1, example would be 123.255.101.2.

 

xKy0l.png
 

I am signing off for tonight but will be glad to elaborate more tomorrow if need be. :)

 

Cheers

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Yes, plug them both into the router.. oh and network sharing has to be turned on, and both PC's need the same "Workgroup" name as well. You do not need "Home Group" turned on, actually I would highly recommend disabling "Home Group" I can show you how to do that as well if need be :)


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First off you DO NOT have to create a Home group, go into your Windows services and turn that off go to your HDD and righclick and in the sharing tab share with everyone.

 

 

Doodles that is your EXTERNAL ip being fed through to your PC via a very poorly set up network , 

Internal Network address should be in the 192.168 or 10.0  range . 

Stu you can set your system up so that the Laptop communicates directly with your PC and your router.  

 

BUT the fact remains that you have not told us what you are trying to do ?? 

 

If sharing GPS for Mapping flight tracking then this can be automatic in that one program on your FXS PC simply broadcasts and the Mapping or what ever listens to a particular port. 

Otherwise we need a bit more information 

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Doodles that is your EXTERNAL ip being fed through to your PC via a very poorly set up network , 

Internal Network address should be in the 192.168 or 10.0  range . 

The IP address I am using is very INTERNAL and is a random set of numbers that I chose for this purpose and it is a very nicely working flawlessly functioning network between my main PC and laptop thank you very much!! Lol :)

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Guys..I have been thinking for ages about running some of my actual fsx instruments using another computer.eg...I got 3 monitors with th2go and run a GTX680.If I plug in and use a 4th monitor so I can undock FMC ,PFD and other glass cockpit instruments it brings my system to its knees,so it isn't really practical for my setup

So on you tube that guy froggo or whatever he calls himself has done a vid on how to use 2 computers networked together to do exactly what I want.

After networking together he explains you need a bought full version of FSUIPC and WideFS

And gives clear instructions on how to set up and display anything from fsx on a sepearate monitor whilst using the second computers resources,

So fellas..that's what I'm trying to achieve

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The IP address I am using is very INTERNAL and is a random set of numbers that I chose for this purpose and it is a very nicely working flawlessly functioning network between my main PC and laptop thank you very much!! Lol :)

 

Doug, that is a public address and not within the standard private ranges (as noted by the other poster). By all means use them, they will work no problem, but if something out there on the Internet is using those addresses and you want to get to it then you'll be SOL. About the only reason to use an address like that would be if that is allocated specifically to your connection by your provider, like on a cable connection or something like that, and NAT is not being used.

 

Stu; suggest you stick with IPs in the industry standard ranges for private networks and avoid any future hassles, unlikely though they may be.

 

...and in case you wonder, I have seen a client running a public range on their internal network and hit exactly this problem. It's rare, but easily avoidable by sticking to industry standards (yep, I'm an IT guy).

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jpreou and Maurice are correct, dont use public ips in private ip networks thats a nightmare for lots of reasons. Use a NAT style gateway on the public wan ip and the private ip ranges Maurice suggested for your internal private network. Let the router run the network address translation (NAT) and handle DHCP, IP reservation etc, you can reserve IPs via mac address if you want specific ips for static routing.


 


Doug I understand and respect the security thinking behind what your doing with trying to set those IPs, but to do good security you first need to understand how it actually works to secure it. If you want to administer the network yourself then I suggest you lookup and teach yourself NAT, gateways, subnet masks and IP ranges. The fancy security minded stuff can come later.


 


Besides running NAT and blocking all incoming traffic in a stateful firewall router like 99.999% of wireless routers is the most basic secuity step to take. Most consumer network gear cant deal with ipv6 no need for that to be on, plus many isps wont issue ipv6 wan ips. Even if your router doesnt do QOS, MS machines can negotiate QPS between themselves so leaving that on is a good idea.


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Doug, that is a public address and not within the standard private ranges (as noted by the other poster). By all means use them, they will work no problem, but if something out there on the Internet is using those addresses and you want to get to it then you'll be SOL. About the only reason to use an address like that would be if that is allocated specifically to your connection by your provider, like on a cable connection or something like that, and NAT is not being used.

 

Stu; suggest you stick with IPs in the industry standard ranges for private networks and avoid any future hassles, unlikely though they may be.

 

...and in case you wonder, I have seen a client running a public range on their internal network and hit exactly this problem. It's rare, but easily avoidable by sticking to industry standards (yep, I'm an IT guy).

Hmmm..Interesting, thanks Jeff, but there is nothing public about my setup and it has nothing to do with the outside world, and it has worked for me wonderfully and trouble free for many years. :) How would an IT guy network a laptop with their main PC? Screenshots would also be very much appreciated :)

 

jpreou and Maurice are correct, dont use public ips in private ip networks thats a nightmare for lots of reasons. Use a NAT style gateway on the public wan ip and the private ip ranges Maurice suggested for your internal private network. Let the router run the network address translation (NAT) and handle DHCP, IP reservation etc, you can reserve IPs via mac address if you want specific ips for static routing.

 

Doug I understand and respect the security thinking behind what your doing with trying to set those IPs, but to do good security you first need to understand how it actually works to secure it. If you want to administer the network yourself then I suggest you lookup and teach yourself NAT, gateways, subnet masks and IP ranges. The fancy security minded stuff can come later.

 

Besides running NAT and blocking all incoming traffic in a stateful firewall router like 99.999% of wireless routers is the most basic secuity step to take. Most consumer network gear cant deal with ipv6 no need for that to be on, plus many isps wont issue ipv6 wan ips. Even if your router doesnt do QOS, MS machines can negotiate QPS between themselves so leaving that on is a good idea.

 

 Thanks nullack for the suggestion but I don't feel the need to lookup or teach myself anymore of that stuff at this time, I was just trying to be helpful and share with Stu what has worked for me trouble free for many years. :) But please feel free to share with us all your knowledge with screenshots on how you would network a laptop with your main PC. :)

 

Cheers :)

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Thanks for helping Stu out :) None of us are trying to give ya a hard time mate, its just theres some misunderstanding about the facts here by you that could be problematic for others to follow :) Please dont consider it more than that, Im confused about many of the facts in life and have been wrong many times, actually the wife reminds me of this often lol

 

Because you have a WAN connection to the internet, you cant do what you like. You could allocate any ip range you wanted it your network was private. Since your on the net, you need to follow some rules. Its kinda like flying in different class airspaces. As your connected to the net, you need to separate your internal IP addressing to whats going on outside your internal network in the wider world of the internet.

 

OK so to help explain I opened up a command prompt and just polled the IP address you use internally to your network, which is shown below


Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600]
(c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.




C:\WINDOWS\system32>ping 123.255.101.1




Pinging 123.255.101.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 123.255.101.1: bytes=32 time=226ms TTL=57
Reply from 123.255.101.1: bytes=32 time=238ms TTL=57
Reply from 123.255.101.1: bytes=32 time=173ms TTL=57
Reply from 123.255.101.1: bytes=32 time=241ms TTL=57




Ping statistics for 123.255.101.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 173ms, Maximum = 241ms, Average = 219ms




C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup 123.255.101.1
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  192.168.1.1




Name:    ip-123-255-101-1.wlan.cuhk.edu.hk
Address:  123.255.101.1






C:\WINDOWS\system32> 

So fact one, the ip your using is already allocated to a machine on the internet. Fact two, its in hong kong, its the chienese university of hong kong. Fact three, heres their website:

 


 

You dont want to get confused with routing between your machine and the universities machine.

 

So, you should use a private IP address range. These addresses are:

 


10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x, or 192.168.x.x


 

These are special ip address ranges designed to be used for private ip networks with an internet wan connection, just like yours.

 

Everything outside of these special private ranges are in fact public ip addresses and chances are most of em are allocated already given the general ip range shortage on ipv4

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Thanks for helping Stu out :) None of us are trying to give ya a hard time mate, its just theres some misunderstanding about the facts here by you that could be problematic for others to follow :) Please dont consider it more than that, Im confused about many of the facts in life and have been wrong many times, actually the wife reminds me of this often lol

 

Because you have a WAN connection to the internet, you cant do what you like. You could allocate any ip range you wanted it your network was private. Since your on the net, you need to follow some rules. Its kinda like flying in different class airspaces. As your connected to the net, you need to separate your internal IP addressing to whats going on outside your internal network in the wider world of the internet.

 

OK so to help explain I opened up a command prompt and just polled the IP address you use internally to your network, which is shown below


Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600]

(c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>ping 123.255.101.1

Pinging 123.255.101.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 123.255.101.1: bytes=32 time=226ms TTL=57

Reply from 123.255.101.1: bytes=32 time=238ms TTL=57

Reply from 123.255.101.1: bytes=32 time=173ms TTL=57

Reply from 123.255.101.1: bytes=32 time=241ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 123.255.101.1:

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 173ms, Maximum = 241ms, Average = 219ms

C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup 123.255.101.1

Server:  UnKnown

Address:  192.168.1.1

Name:    ip-123-255-101-1.wlan.cuhk.edu.hk

Address:  123.255.101.1

C:\WINDOWS\system32> 

So fact one, the ip your using is already allocated to a machine on the internet. Fact two, its in hong kong, its the chienese university of hong kong. Fact three, heres their website:

 

 

You dont want to get confused with routing between your machine and the universities machine.

 

So, you should use a private IP address range. These addresses are:

 

 

 

These are special ip address ranges designed to be used for private ip networks with an internet wan connection, just like yours.

 

Everything outside of these special private ranges are in fact public ip addresses and chances are most of em are allocated already given the general ip range shortage on ipv4

 

 

Cool, thanks...but the PC's I am using are not connected via WAN, they are Ethernet cable connected. :)

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If you had no WAN link, youd have no internet and you wouldnt be posting. The physical means by which your cabling is done isnt really the issue. Theres a difference between the physical connection and the logical connection. As you note your using ethernet which uses twisted pair cabling. When people say your "WAN link" they dont usually mean the physical cabling means of the network, they mean the logical connection to the internet. In general IT lingo, a WAN implies a network dispersed over a large geographical area. In home user situations this usually means the internet since small home networks dont exist in multiple sites across large distances.


 


So yes your using physical ethernet cable, but youve also still got a logical wan link to the public internet. This is the key reason why you should use private IP address ranges in private ip networks that involve a wan link to the internet.


 


Cheers mate


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If you had no WAN link, youd have no internet and you wouldnt be posting. The physical means by which your cabling is done isnt really the issue. Theres a difference between the physical connection and the logical connection. As you note your using ethernet which uses twisted pair cabling. When people say your "WAN link" they dont usually mean the physical cabling means of the network, they mean the logical connection to the internet. In general IT lingo, a WAN implies a network dispersed over a large geographical area. In home user situations this usually means the internet since small home networks dont exist in multiple sites across large distances.

 

So yes your using physical ethernet cable, but youve also still got a logical wan link to the public internet. This is the key reason why you should use private IP address ranges in private ip networks that involve a wan link to the internet.

 

Cheers mate

Ahh yes..correct you are, I learn something new everyday..I was confusing WAN with WiFi hahaha :)

 

Ok, then.. if you have a laptop and a desktop PC side by side with a router and a couple of cat6 cables...how would you network them together??

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Doug I would just let the router configure the client devices automatically by setting the tcpip settings in each client to use automatic settings which will allow the routers dynamic host control protocol (dhcp) to configure the right IP address, default gateway, subnet mask etc for each network interface chip (nic) in each client machine. Routers will also support mac based dhcp address reservation so that you can poke open port "holes" through the nat firewall to a consistently known machine, like you want to run a mail server for example. Port forwarding at the consumer wireless router level generally requires a known IP rather than through say machine name or layer 7 handshake methods, so dhcp reservation is good for that, Generally servers are statically allocated for ip addressing meaning you hard code the ip address like you did, but for clients often dhcp is the easier choice. Consumer wireless routers will use private ip addressing by default in their setups, but you can customise the chosen dhcp allocation range as well as things like the default gateway ip address in the router setup.


 


Basically you want a router that will do a stateful firewall, NAT and DHCP those are the basics. Theres fancy stuff from there, like smart/managed switch features to manage ports with bandwidth throttling to certain machines on certain ports and the like, lock down specific ports to specific mac addresses, tieing nics together in link aggregation for double the bandwidth etcetc


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Doug I would just let the router configure the client devices automatically by setting the tcpip settings in each client to use automatic settings which will allow the routers dynamic host control protocol (dhcp) to configure the right IP address, default gateway, subnet mask etc for each network interface chip (nic) in each client machine. Routers will also support mac based dhcp address reservation so that you can poke open port "holes" through the nat firewall to a consistently known machine, like you want to run a mail server for example. Port forwarding at the consumer wireless router level generally requires a known IP rather than through say machine name or layer 7 handshake methods, so dhcp reservation is good for that, Generally servers are statically allocated for ip addressing meaning you hard code the ip address like you did, but for clients often dhcp is the easier choice. Consumer wireless routers will use private ip addressing by default in their setups, but you can customise the chosen dhcp allocation range as well as things like the default gateway ip address in the router setup.

 

Basically you want a router that will do a stateful firewall, NAT and DHCP those are the basics. Theres fancy stuff from there, like smart/managed switch features to manage ports with bandwidth throttling to certain machines on certain ports and the like, lock down specific ports to specific mac addresses, tieing nics together in link aggregation for double the bandwidth etcetc

OK, Thanks! :)

 

Cheers

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Just got up down here in Brisbane.I followed all instructions on Froogles vid about networking and now i have my c drive from my fsx pc on my laptop.


worked a treat.


looks like a lively discussion whilst i have been sleeping.


I will now load full version of FSUIPC and WideFS onto my main FSX computer,and load WideFS and FreeFD - (glass cockpit displays) - onto my laptop and im away.


Thanks for all suggestions


 


Cheers Stu

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So,all done and it's spectacular.Network and home group setup as per Froogles vid,FSUIPC4 and WideFS on my FSX PC...... then FreeFD and 2 of the files from WideFS onto my laptop.I attached another 19" monitor to laptop and set up in front of my 3 monitors.

Cranked up fsx..started WideFS on laptop..open glass cockpit gauges in FreeFD and voila..they appeared on my attached 19" monitor,

Started a flight and they are all absolutely accurate.

So can run 4 th monitor showing glass cockpit instruments,but not using any of my FSX PC resources..the laptop is running them.

Obviously going to have a positive impact on FPS when operating airliners into large dense airports.

A happy simmer

Cheers stu

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Hi Guys, I moved this topic into a more appropriate area for this discussion. I have also stickied it for now as I think there a lot of users who have thought about doing this and there are some great instructions here.  Can I make a suggestion as this is something that comes up in various places regularly.  If maybe all of you tech guys could get together and agree on the right way to do something like this, maybe you could make up a document that we could have as a downloadable file here for anyone that may be looking to do it.  It of course would not be an officially supported or endorsed thing, but we have had some very useful and appreciated things put together by members over the years that have benefited our users.  I could see this as one.


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  • 9 months later...

I know this thread is a year old, but it is still relevant. I decided to post here rather than start a new thread. I've been reading about how to do this, watched a couple of videos, but still not clear what would be the best way to network my laptop to my main PC.

First, what I want to do is offload as many 3rd party programs from my main PC (which has P3D) onto my laptop. The main programs I want running on my laptop are programs like RC4, ASN, Opus, and PilotEdge.

My main PC (the one with P3D) is connected to a wireless network and is downstairs from the wireless router. The laptop is rarely used and will mainly be used as mentioned before. It also can connect to our WiFi network. So, my question is: should I connect the laptop to my PC through the wireless network or should I just buy a $10 ethernet crossover cable and connect the 2 computers directly? If I do the latter, do I still need to assign IP addresses and establish a workgroup?

Cheers,

Todd

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