Setup LAN via a Fibre/WiFi Zytel Router

Hi everyone; My skill level is very low, especially when it comes to hardware, and I would like to connect my two laptops via a Zytel router that is connected to an ISP via optical fiber. The HP pavilion laptop is connected to the router physically with an Ethernet cable and the Mecer notebook via WiFi because it does not have an Ethernet port.

Could someone please help me with an step by step idiot proof guide in how to create a LAN with this setup?

Any help will be much appreciated.

Hi and welcome to the amazing Ubuntu MATE community !

The first thing you need to do is assign static IPs to your computers in the DHCP settings of your Zyxel router. I don't own such a router and assume that you will be able to find a manual online with idiot proof instructions. Let's just say at the moment your computers change their IP on your local network every time you connect them to your router and you need to change that.

When it is done, you can choose between Samba or NFS Shares. I had some crashes with Samba in the past, it was a bit CPU intensive sometimes so I ended up with NFS. It's way faster, eats less CPU. It's easy to set up. The only downside I found with it is there's a timeout for shutting down the client just after shutting down the host. If computer 1 is the host and computer 2 the client, let's just say computer 2 will take longer than usual to shut down if you do it immediately after shutting down computer 1.

As these are quite popular, there are dozens of idiot proof tutorials online regarding these protocols.

Here are some for NFS:



And Samba:

Once those shares are set up, you will have to set up your server firewall with new rules in order to authorize your client to access your host (hence the static IPs). This requires you to know the static IPs you have assigned in your router interface.

If you opt for NFS, the tutorial explains you how to open port 2049 via the terminal with a one line command.

If you opt for Samba you can create three advanced rules in your GUFW firewall:

Name: NetBIOS Name Service
Port:137
Protocol:Both
IP: from your client IP to your host IP port 137

Name: NetBIOS Datagram Service
Port:138
Protocol:UDP
IP: from your client IP to your host IP port 138

Name: NetBIOS Session Service
Port:139
Protocol:TCP
IP: from your client IP to your host IP port 139

When it is done, you should be able to easily browse your network shares in Caja.

1 Like

Hi Utsuro,
Thank you so much for trying to help. I had a look and I think I know where to change the IP addresses to static, but I have no idea where to find the static IP address, netmask or gateway. My interests has always been in software and programming, but when it comes to hardware and networking, I am really virtually illiterate.
Warm regards, Johann

You're welcome.
We all have our strengths and weaknesses but we're all here to help no matter the level. The goal is to achieve things.

In your DHCP server settings in your router interface, there should be a start IP address, something like 192.168.1.100 or whatever. Then you should be able to use something like 192.168.1.101 or 192.168.1.110 for instance as static IPs for your computers.

On your computers, you can type hostname -I in a terminal to obtain your current local IP.
The first printed IP should be the current IP of your computer on your local network. You can use those current IPs if you want as you know for sure they will be OK since you're using them. They just have to be static and you need to know them for setting up your network easily.