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Connecting a Windows computer to the network via Ethernet cable is available anywhere on campus where there is a working network port. The following guide will take you through the steps involved in setting up your laptop to use the JCU network, and co-exist with home networks if necessary.
Should you experience any problems while following the guide, check the Support web page for further assistance.
Locating your Ethernet card
- First thing we need to do is find your network card. Depending on your operating system there are different ways to access this information. The one common method of accessing it is through the Control Panel. On all versions of windows this is located by going Start and selecting Control Panel.
Figure 1: Accessing Windows Options
- On Windows 98/2000 computers the next step is to locate the network settings part of control panel. On Windows 98 this is labeled as Network and on Windows 2000 computers it is call Network Connections.
Note:
Windows 98 users - now go to step 6
Windows 2000 users - now go to step 4
Figure 2: Windows Control Panel
- On Windows XP computer there is an extra step to accessing network connections. This is calledl Categories. You first need to choose the Network and Internet Connections and then choose Network Connections
Figure 3: Category View
Figure 4: Network Connections
- The next screen (see Figure 5) lists all available network connections on your computer. Look for any that say Local Area Connection. This means that you have a connection available that you can use for connecting the laptop to the JCU network.
Figure 5: Finding your Local Area Connection
- What we need to do now is make sure that the network device we have is setup to accept JCU's network configuration. By right-clicking on the Local Area Connection icon and choosing properties we can investigate whether we need to change the settings to get it to work at JCU.
Figure 6: Locating Network Properties
Configuring the Network
- You should now be able to view the protocols, clients, and services that this network device is currently supporting (See Figure 7). The bare minimum you need for your laptop to work at JCU is -
* Client for Microsoft Networks
* Internet Protocol ( TCP / IP )
By default these should be installed but if they are not you can install them by pressing the Install... button on the General tab.
Client for Microsoft Networks can be found under the Client option and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) can be found under the Protocol option.
After we have all the correct protocols and clients installed we need to make sure we have correctly configured the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) option. Select it and click the Properties button.
Figure 7: TCP/IP Properties
- The network system here at JCU has already been designed and configured by the University staff. All you need to do is tell your computer to get the settings from the JCU system. To do this we setup what is called DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) which asks the existing network structure to add this computer to the network.
You should now see your current addressing setup (see Figure 8). If your setup looks exactly like this with the radio options set to Obtain an IP address automatically and Obtain DNS server address automatically you can press OK and finish the configuration.
If your system is using manual IP addresses and / or DNS addresses and you don't use this laptop on any other network it is safe to select the automatic options and finish the configuration.
If your system is set to manual and you do use it on another system we will need to proceed to step 8, but first write down any of the values on this page.
After you write down the details click the Obtain an IP address automatically and Obtain DNS server address automatically options and proceed to step 8.
Figure 8: DHCP Settings
Getting your laptop to co-exist on two networks
- If you click the Alternate Configuration tab you will get a screen that looks similar to the last one we were looking at (see Figure 9). Use this page when the automatic connect option has failed to fall back on the values listed here.
Select the User configured radio button and begin copying in any values that you took down from the previous step into the fields with the same names.
You will notice that there are extra fields named Preferred WINS server and Alternate WINS server. These options are for groups of Windows computers and unless you know what the WINS server address is in your area you can safely leave it blank.
Figure 9: Alternate Configuration
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