Before we had the internet, and two computers were using WinXP, I had no problem connecting them together with the two belkin USB adapters. However, now we have a router as well as an internet connection, I'm at a loss as to how to connect them together.

Granted, one computer I'll probably not be able to connect to easily is running Windows Vista, the other two, though, are running Zenwalk 5.2 and Puppy 3.01.

I've tried ssh, which didn't work. After reading some information on ssh, I noticed that the machine with Puppy on it doesn't have an ssh directory in /etc, so could that be a problem?

Another problem, I think anyway, is I need to somehow have my router allow me to access the computers through it. I think it might have something to do with Access point, but I figured I ought to ask before messing with that.

Another question I have about connecting the computers together through the wireless router. If I understand correctly what people have written, it will slow down the connection, some places even say it might slow it down a lot, so could I just disable it when I'm not using it as such? or is it really not that big of a problem?

Thanks for any help...

P.S. I am busy reading through this http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/, but there is a lot of information to go through. So just checking to see if there is a simpler explanation...

Ok, I'm not sure what kind of USB adapters you're talking about, but if they were regular Ethernet adapters, the cable you were using was a crossover cable (unless they are some sort of specialized adapters that auto-detect cable type and can switch the Rx/Tx wires digitally), which won't work with your router. You can identify a crossover cable by looking at the colour of the wires on the ends -- if their orders are the same, it's a regular cable, if they're not, it's a crossover. You'll need at least two regular cables (if you don't have one already, you'll need another one to go from your router to your modem).

However, if they're wireless adapters, you don't have to worry about any of that.

If you were connecting them wirelessly before, throwing a router into the mix won't affect performance to any noticeable amount. However, if you are using only wireless, unless your router has an auto-/quick-configure button, you'll need a wired connection to set it up.

Also, if you were using two XP machines before, you were probably using Internet Connection Sharing (ICS), so you'll have to disable that before going through your router.

If there was no /etc/ssh directory, ssh probably isn't installed (although I'm not intimately familiar with either of the distros you're using), and you'll probably want an internet connection to install it (not absolutely necessary, but much easier).

Give us some more details, and we can help you further.

Thanks...

They are Belkin wireless USB adapters. I didn't think I'd need to be too specific since the forum is for wireless networking, I'm still fairly new to what information I need to add when writing in forums.

As for how to access the computers, both Puppy and Zenwalk have the binary ssh, Puppy however, doesn't have the ssh directory in /etc. Just used the find command, there is no directory on Puppy for it.

Our computers are connected as follows. Cable -> Modem -> Wireless Router -> Eth Windows Vista, Puppy linux and Zenwalk are connected via wireless WPA-TKIP to the Router, both using zd1211rw.

I'm no longer using XP, switched to Zenwalk and Puppy linux on the two machines.

Zenwalk and Puppy are slackware based.

Basically I just want to know how to connect to the computers. I've done it using windows, and used a program which would let me run programs from any of the computers, now I want to learn how to do it in Linux, but as I stated before, when I used the USB adapters to connect directly to any one of the two computers, it was fairly simple.

Before when I used Windows XP:
I used both machines to create a SSID and only had to connect to the one that was being broadcasted in order to have both machines connect to each other.

Now using the Router:
Using the router, which is only allowing me to use the internet, it doesn't exactly seem to let me connect to the other computers.

I've read through the Router's settings and tried all the IP addresses, and hostnames of the computers, which didn't do anything when I tried using them...

Using ssh ip, Connection refused.
Using ssh hostname, Could not resolve hostname

Using bvnc, there are no services. I changed the domain from the SSID to the local domain name (which is different), there still were no services to select...

Sorry if I'm not giving enough information, unfortunately, I am not really sure what is needed.

Lol, I didn't actually check which forum this was in. >_<

On your linux machines, run ifconfig, and post the output. That'll show the IP's of the two machines. You said you are able to access the net from the machines?

Yeah, I can connect to the net. I wouldn't be typing this if I couldn't, ha ha ha...

Anyway, the IP addresses I know from the top of my head...

But here they are using ifconfig...I'll post the other one from the other machine after I'm done with this one...

Ok, here's the output from the other computer.