Peer to Peer Networks & Firewalls

I finished up a job this week for a company which has a peer-to-peer network which lost their Internet connection after someone jacked with their DSL modem while trying to install a wireless router.  They had a Zoom DSL modem/router with DHCP enabled.  I could not get this router or an identical one working even after talking with Zoom tech support.  The company requested a new modem from AT&T, but began having network issues in the meantime.  All the computers on this network use some kind of commercial firewall – either McAfee, Norton, or AVG.  All three of these products wreaked havok with me changing routers and such.  I had to end up assigning static IPs to each computer and going on many computers’ firewalls to either trust the network and/or specific IP addresses.  So if you run into trouble with a peer-to-peer network not seeing computers, check the firewall settings and make sure the firewall trusts the network and possibly specific IPs if there are still connection issues.

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