Two computers connected to router - Privacy

[Gii]

Hello there.

I will soon have two computers connected to Virgin Media through a router. The router is a 'Linksys WRT54GL Wireless G'.

I have read that both computers will be able to communicate with each other via the router, allowing for file sharing, etc.

I was wondering if there is a way of blocking this type of access between the computers, given that it is a family shared setup and one of the computers will be used for finances and business. I don't mind the occasional file transfer back and forth between the computers, but I don't want free access back and forth 24/7.

Please advise, and thank you.

[popper]

Originally Posted by Gii

Hello there.

I will soon have two computers connected to Virgin Media through a router. The router is a 'Linksys WRT54GL Wireless G'.

I have read that both computers will be able to communicate with each other via the router, allowing for file sharing, etc.

I was wondering if there is a way of blocking this type of access between the computers, given that it is a family shared setup and one of the computers will be used for finances and business. I don't mind the occasional file transfer back and forth between the computers, but I don't want free access back and forth 24/7.

Please advise, and thank you.

normally users would set both (or many/any machines on the so called LAN)machines to share their drives or just Dirs for both reading and writing, all you need do is not set your 'finances and business' machine to share its drives.

if you want to move or copy a file from any of the other machines on your LAN you can do that from the 'finances and business' machine as long as the other machines drives are set for reading.

i assume your working on the windos OS of some sort XP/SP2, and so you will probably use the control panel Network setup wizard.

and if so, you just need to turn off file sharing on the 'finances and business' machine so they(any LAN connected machine/device) cant see or copy files to/from that machines HD's.

pritty simple really if your not a total newb, but its easy to learn the steps if you need help , just ask here after you have got the wireless router working and accessing the net from all the machines on your new (wireless)LAN.

[sprattgraham]

You have to manually select what folders/files you want to share if you have done that then other networked PC’s will not be able to access them.

So you shouldn’t have any issues.

[XFS03]

It's been a while since I set up my file sharing over the network (on Windows XP sp2), but from what I can remember, right-clicking on a drive or folder should bring up "sharing & security" as one of the options. From the "sharing" tab you can allow that folder or drive to be shared with other computers on the network. The icon for that drive or folder will then show a hand underneath, indicating that it can be shared on the network.

[danpad]

if you using xp professional, you can turn sim-ple file sharing off, you will then get the full sharing options wher you can set security and permissions setting for individual users,

also if the files are in a My documents location on one of the machines rather than the roo ( directly on the hard drive) the system should altomatically deny access to those files

[tweetiepooh]

Depends on the router too.

My old US Robotics ADSL beast allowed be to unbridge the LAN ports so they could be on separate networks. Then the firewall in the router could control traffic between them eg ports, protocol, day/time.

A solution is to invest in a network storage device (NAS) and then you can plop shareable files onto that and access to business PC is not required at all. You can also use this as a backup for your important stuff.

[deed02392]

I guess if you only need the occasional file transfer, and you mainly want to prevent file sharing, the best thing for you to do would be to disable it completely and use a USB storage device to transfer files when you need to.
Or do as tweetiepooh suggested and invest in a NAS, which is something that may be a tad too adventurous for you if you can't justify the benefits, as they can be quite expensive.

[dragon]

If you want to be really sure just Deny everything on the Finance and business machines firewall.