Help with basic home lab setup

Hello, new member and a little stuck. Could anyone help

I will soon be starting to study for my MCSE & CCNA and I am trying to create a small home network to practice on. I have some knowledge of the fundamentals of TCP/IP but I am stuck already. Please could someone point me in the right direction for answers on the following problem

Setup

Router 1 : Netgear home router (internet access)

192.168.0.1

Switch : Netgear 8 port gigabyte switch

Server 1 : Windows 2003 Enterprise

192.168.0.5 (ip address reserved on the above router)

Client 1 : Windows XP SP1

192.168.0.4

END

Server 1 - DHCP enabled and DNS set-up


PROBLEM

I cannot join Client 1 to my Domain london.co.uk.local on Server 1 (DNS) - I get a domain controller could not be contacted

I cannot even ping Server 1 from Client 1 or vice-versa. They can both ping the Router

Further Information Steps I have taken

1. All NIC speeds set to auto

2. All firewalls turned off on the clients, if I try to turn it off on the server it says : 'windows firewall cannot run because another program or service is running that might use the NAT component IPnat.sys

3.DHCP and DNS services on Server 1 have been stopped.

4. Arp-a produces just the ip address of the router

5. Client 1 cannot ping Client 2 or Server 1 and vice versa. i am pinging using IP. They can all ping the router

6. Ipconfig /all output from Server 1

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : dc1
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : london.co.
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : Yes
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : london.co.
co.uk.loca
uk.local

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 3:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/100 S Dual P
er #2
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-02-B3-B4-3A-EE
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.5
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 26 August 2008 02:16:58
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 27 August 2008 02:16:58

7/ Ipconfig /all output from Client 1

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Client1
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-17-A4-ED-FA-E3
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.4
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 26 August 2008 10:37:17
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 27 August 2008 10:37:17

**NB Client 1s IP is DHCP enabled not Static like server 1. i.e it should be getting its IP from Server 1 but is is not

I deally I want to be able to have them all pinging each other and my DNS and DHCP back up and running on my Domain Controller so I can start practising

I realise I can create a network via the switch in a big workgroup but I am looking to go the DC route

Cheers for your help
Cheers

Benjamin

Welcome to networking .....you'll LOVE this stuff!!!

I setup a network like yours a few years back with the same intentions. Of course, the network has grown larger and more complex since. Initially, I did encounter a few issues, whose resolutions, over time, became fundamental knowledge. In learning how to resolve the issues, I also learned the "surrounding" topics of setting up a domain.

There really is a lot more to a domain [Active Directory], DNS, and DHCP, but I'll try to summarize some key topics...hopefully this should point you in the right direction on where to further research/read. But don't rush to learn it all at once, your course should slowly teach you all of that.

Arp-a produces just the IP address of the router because from the sounds of it, that's the only network node the computers have made contact with (because the computers couldn't even ping each other), so there would be no MAC address to IP address mapping in their ARP cache for each other.

Regarding the firewall issue on the server...
Figure out a way to get rid of it/disable it! The domain controller cannot have a firewall. Try to simply turn on the server in safe mode, go to services, and disable the Windows Firewall/ICF service. Confirm that the service is disabled on the clients too, I noticed this to be a slap in the face for an issue when I was first setting up my lab. Once this is done, you should be able to ping everyone by IP address and have the ARP cache on the computers/server populated appropriately.

I don't know of any home routers that offer IP address reservation as a feature, so I'll assume that the router is offering IPs by DHCP. The ipconfig output from the server confirmed that the server is receiving an IP address from a DHCP server.

Some background on reserved vs static IP addresses:
IP address reservation is a feature where you specify the server's NIC's MAC address and the preferred IP address on DHCP. When the computer is turned on, it makes an attempt to obtain an IP address. The computer doesn't know what IP address it'll get, but the DHCP server will, and the DHCP server will lease out the IP address you specified on the reservation every time. The DHCP server will know what computer to lease the IP address out to because the DHCP packets coming from the computer when its requesting an IP address will contain the computer's MAC address, which the DHCP server will use to match with what it has on reservations. On the other hand, a static IP address is setup on the TCP/IP Properties window. When this is done, the computer makes no attempt to obtain an IP address from the DHCP server (since it already has one).

With that said, it's standard, best practice to assign a server a static IP address. And I believe you cannot setup Active Directory unless the server has a static IP address because of Active Directory's integration with DNS and the rest of the domain, so first verify that the server does have a static IP address by looking in TCP/IP Properties.

You mentioned that you wanted the server to be the one to provide IP addresses and not the router...
1. Disable the DHCP service on the router
2. Verify that the DHCP service is installed on the server and setup an IP address scope on the server (for ease, setup the scope with an IP address range that's the same as what the router provided).
3. Make sure that you are a local administrator on the server and authorize the DHCP server, followed by enabling the scope.

After you do these few steps, the server will be ready to hand out IP addresses. On the clients, do an ipconfig /release followed by ipconfig /renew. The server should lease out an IP address to the clients.

But note that there's a bit more to DHCP than what meets the eye, so hold off on this.

This may be a silly question, but being that I didn't see it mentioned on the detailed information that you provided, I'll ask: Did you setup Active Directory (AD) already (by running DCPROMO)? It's dcpromo that will install AD, which will give the server the ability to be a domain controller and actually "control" the domain and allow other computers to be added to the domain.

Regarding DNS...
If you didn't set it up manually, DCPROMO will prompt you to do so. Note that when you later try to add a client to the domain, DNS will be used to determine the domain controller of the domain that you specify, so DNS must be setup correctly.

Also, what guide are you using to setting up Active Directory, DNS, and DHCP?