Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Question for you "computer guys"!

In the case your computer is turning itself on, I think I might have the answer. Conditions like that reside in the BIOS. If you just wired up your HTPC to the network, your motherboard might have the "Wake on LAN" or "Wake on PCI" feature enabled, which will turn on the computer whenever there is LAN activity.

If you have your motherboard manual, find where you can turn off that setting. If you don't have the manual, go into your BIOS by tapping either the F1, F2, or Del keys when your machine starts up (it should give you a friendly message at the bottom of the screen telling you which key to enter BIOS). Once in the BIOS, try punkering around in the "Power" or similarly named category, and look for a Wake on LAN or similar option. Make sure that is turned OFF. Also while you are there, make sure the "Restore on AC Power Loss" option is turned to "Power Off". Every motherboard is different, so I hope I'm giving you enough to work with. Once you have made those changes, go ahead and save and exit (A menu on the right side has a key assigned to "Save and Exit"), and hopefully everything should be working fine.

Phew. I hope that helps! At least your HTPC refuses to turn off. Maybe it wants to play the Axioms more!

Good tips, Dan. THANK YOU. I will check the bios.

The HTPC was always wired to the network; what changed was the router, not its presence on the network. But, that is definitely worth a shot.

It spoke this morning - audio that the Avast database had been updated. My wife was really alarmed/amused. The whole Hal9000 thing is starting to freak us out.

"Turn off, dammit" - "I'm sorry, Tom, I can't let you do that".

Hey, my brothers in geekhood...

Some time ago, I solved my HTPC "wake on lan" problem. It was NOT in the BIOS. It was an XP device setting for the integrated Marvell gigabit LAN connection. Apparently, the Linksys router was sending out Magic Packets. Took a while to find it, but, as my daughter used to say when she was a toddler, "all bebber".

NEW AND IMPROVED NETWORK QUESTION!

Okay, not improved, but you guys are nice and smart and helpful and talk slow so I can understand. No good deed goes unpunished.

I'm using the Linksys WRT54G which is wireless plus four ports. I also have available an old Netgear 4 port wired router. I am interested in centrally locking down internet access through the router rather than at the workstation level, but I need the locked-down connections to be wired rather than wireless to do that. I'm out of ports, because currently connected via ethernet (because I can do so, I trust copper, I want fast speed, I don't want to buy wireless cards, I already ran the wires, blah blah blah) are:

Wife's PC
NAS (Clark Connect Linux for file sharing and slimserver)
HTPC
HP 7310 all-in-one printer

Connecting wirelessly are:
Kids computer (here's the rub)
Laptop (used by wife for volunteer work mostly)

What I want to do is filter/control internet access to the kids computer via the router rather than the workstation because it is convenient for me to have them login as administrator level accounts (don't come bother me every time you want to install some stupid game). That machine is also co-located with the server (at a desk), so I use it sometimes myself. I don't want to just pull the plug, but I don't want to give my quickly growing kids access to the whole world whenever they want it, either.

So, I guess it is a parent computer use policy question combined with a network topology question.

Can I layer the Netgear router onto one of the Linksys ports so that I have more wired ports, or is management of that likely to drive me insane? Or maybe vice versa (have the Netgear on top of the Linksys)?

Do I need more hardware (a switch or hub or ?)? Say no.

Is there a better scenario?

Thanks for your thoughts, and for helping with that whole "Networking 101 for people who know just enough to be dangerous" thing.

1. Maybe. But it's likely to drive you nuts. If you do choose to try this, hook the two together only through the LAN ports, don't use the WAN port on the Netgear.

2. Switches are pretty cheap these days, but...

But, what?

If I stick a switch in the kids room, and then plug the ccserver into one port and the kids computer into another port, do I get static IP addresses for both (192.168.2.1 or something?). Does that solve my problem? I mean, you know, there's "new hardware" and then there is "expensive new hardware".

But, you'd have to spend some money (probably <$100).

The switch doesn't do anything but expand the network; it doesn't hand out addresses, doesn't require static addresses or dynamic addresses. If your router is handing out dynamic (DHCP) addresses, then your kids' computer would get a dynamic address--unless you explicitly give it a static address.

It would solve your problem.

And it's way, way less complicated than I just made it sound.

Is there some reason why this Linksys would not work ($17.99 including shipping after a $10 rebate). Do I care about brand on this deal (SMC, D-Link, Netgear, etc.)?

I like the idea of static IP addresses for the wired devices. Do I do that through the router or through the workstation? (I know, I'm a dunderhead).

That switch would work just fine--you don't really care about brand, other than quality. I wouldn't touch D-Link if you paid me.

Statics would be configured on the workstation. As long as you're putting them outside of your DHCP range, you shouldn't have a problem. It'll probably work better for filtering on that little Linksys router, anyway.

Tom-

Tell me if I'm missing something. The idea is to limit/lockdown your children's internet access? Your current config works but this is what you want to do on top of that? I believe what you can do is simply give your children's computers static IP addresses and set up an Internet Access Policy in the 54G's Security section. That way you don't have to add hardware or move anything around. You can enter their IP addresses (or really you could leave them DHCP and filter by MAC address) and create a policy to control access. Does this do what you want or am I missing something? I guess what I don't understand is needing the kids' machines to be wired to control access. The filtering is done at Layer 2 (MAC) or Layer 3 (IP), so it shouldn't matter what the physical link is.