Ethernet network not using correct SSID - Preventing Homegroup sharing.

[Macboi]

Hello people of the internet!

 

I am trying to test the difference between wireless and Ethernet Homegroup transfer speeds in an attempt to convince my parental unit to allow me to run cat6 through our wall.  (My desktop is directly above my router on the next level & there are already holes in the wall for coax & phone line.)

 

Due to obviously not being able to compare the speeds using my desktop, I am using laptops with crystaldiskmark6 to test the speed of the homegroup.  The laptops have not been cooperating and I shall go through the steps I have followed here:

 

Tested the wireless transfer speed with newer craptop that has a decent network card sitting ~ a meter below router and received this result:

Honestly not too shabby but Ethernet should still be faster.

 

I went on to test Ethernet performance with the laptop and found out it only supports 100Mb/s. How is that even possible, the 10 year old desktop that is the center for the Homegroup even has Gb Ethernet.

 

Pulled out older laptop that does support Gb Ethernet and plugged it into the router to find that it is detecting the wrong SSID; preventing me from connecting to the Homegroup.  (It does allow me to connect to the Homegroup using wireless because it detects the correct SSID.)  Instead it seems to be using the default SSID of my router.

 - Should not be NETGEAR05

Any help is greatly appreciated!  Also, if there are any flaws in my testing methods please mention them.

[Macboi]

Just now, RandomGuy13 said:

I don't think the wrong SSID and your speed issue are correlated. Windows 10 will try and guess your SSID based on wireless connections you have joined previously. Ethernet doesn't support a network name like wireless does, so this realy doesn't affect anything. Basically when you join a wireless network, it will look at the mac address of the gateway, When you connect to a wired network it will look at the mac address of the gateway and see if it matches the one from before, it it does it names the network the same name.

 

Im sure there is a way of undoing this, perhaps forgetting the wifi network or maybe there is a way of resetting your network settings. 

What I find odd is that it has the correct SSID when connected to the router wireless, but does not use say correct one when connecting wired.

 

Thanks though, I will try forgetting and reconnecting to the wireless network.

[dalekphalm]

You could lug your desktop + monitor downstairs and do the tests that way.

 

That aside, did you actually try running the tests on the laptop, or did you just stop after you saw the "SSID" wrong different from what you expecting?

[Macboi]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

You could lug your desktop + monitor downstairs and do the tests that way.

 

That aside, did you actually try running the tests on the laptop, or did you just stop after you saw the "SSID" wrong different from what you expecting?

I have a ton of things plugged into my desktop so lugging it downstairs is unfortunately not an option.

 

To test the speed, I need to be able to access the Homegroup and it does not allow me to do that with the incorrect SSID.

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, Macboi said:

I have a ton of things plugged into my desktop so lugging it downstairs is unfortunately not an option.

 

To test the speed, I need to be able to access the Homegroup and it does not allow me to do that with the incorrect SSID.

So, you can confirm that you cannot connect to the shared folder?

 

Because SSID's in general have nothing to do with Homegroup. SSID is a WIFI only term.

 

EDIT: If the computer in question is Windows XP or older, it won't support Homegroup - I'm not even sure that Vista does either. I believe it was introduced with Windows 7.

[brwainer]

while connected to both the wired and wireless, do the following:

1. Find your default gateway IP (10.0.0.1 in your screenshot)
2. run "arp -a" and find the MAC of the IP from step #1

If the MAC addresses match, then you are on the same network. BTW, the MAC address of the default gateway is what Windows looks at to try to match the network names between wired and wireless.

14 minutes ago, Macboi said:

Instead it seems to be using the default SSID of my router.

if this computer had been connected to the wireless back when it had the default SSID, then that would have been saved into the computer with the router's MAC, and that's why it is showing up for the wired now. I am not sure where exactly Windows keeps this or how to clear it out.

 

The name of the network shouldn't prevent homegroup from connecting, but I could be wrong. What I think is more likely is that your router is set up to isolate the wired and wireless networks from each other - this would be an option you can disable if that's the case. To test, do this:

1. Connect one computer to wired and one to wireless
2. Follow these instructions on both so that they respond to pings (by default Windows does not): https://kb.iu.edu/d/aopy
3. Try to ping the computers from each other. Also, make sure that their IPs are in the same subnet (in your picture above, 10.0.0.19/24 means the subnet is 10.0.0.1-10.0.0.254)

If the computers can ping each other and are in the same subnet, there shouldn't be any networking reason preventing HomeGroup.

[Macboi]

4 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

So, you can confirm that you cannot connect to the shared folder?

 

Because SSID's in general have nothing to do with Homegroup. SSID is a WIFI only term.

 

EDIT: If the computer in question is Windows XP or older, it won't support Homegroup - I'm not even sure that Vista does either. I believe it was introduced with Windows 7.

Yes, it is not detecting the other computer within Homegroup, therefore not allowing to join it.  I am presuming this is because it is detecting the network as a different name (I have been referring to the name as SSID.)

 

All computers that have been used are running Windows 10.

[nsinnott]

5 minutes ago, brwainer said:

The name of the network shouldn't prevent homegroup from connecting, but I could be wrong. What I think is more likely is that your router is set up to isolate the wired and wireless networks from each other - this would be an option you can disable if that's the case. To test, do this:

1. Connect one computer to wired and one to wireless
2. Follow these instructions on both so that they respond to pings (by default Windows does not): https://kb.iu.edu/d/aopy
3. Try to ping the computers from each other. Also, make sure that their IPs are in the same subnet (in your picture above, 10.0.0.19/24 means the subnet is 10.0.0.1-10.0.0.254)

If the computers can ping each other and are in the same subnet, there shouldn't be any networking reason preventing HomeGroup.

I would tend to agree with this. I will say though, that within Windows, it stores the name of the device, which isn't necessarily the same as the SSID. For example, my router's name is NewHouse, but the SSID is something completely different. On wireless, the SSID shows as the "something else" but within Windows, it shows as NewHouse. However, I do have connectivity between the devices.

[Macboi]

Just now, nsinnott said:

I would tend to agree with this. I will say though, that within Windows, it stores the name of the device, which isn't necessarily the same as the SSID. For example, my router's name is NewHouse, but the SSID is something completely different. On wireless, the SSID shows as the "something else" but within Windows, it shows as NewHouse. However, I do have connectivity between the devices.

I will try this, thank you.

[nsinnott]

1 minute ago, Macboi said:

Yes, it is not detecting the other computer within Homegroup, therefore not allowing to join it.  I am presuming this is because it is detecting the network as a different name (I have been referring to the name as SSID.)

 

All computers that have been used are running Windows 10.

Have you tried setting up a share rather than doing it through HomeGroup? How about trying a remote connection from the laptop to the HomeGroup desktop? Have you tried pinging the machines from each other?

[Macboi]

Just now, nsinnott said:

Have you tried setting up a share rather than doing it through HomeGroup? How about trying a remote connection from the laptop to the HomeGroup desktop? Have you tried pinging the machines from each other?

I am going to do the whole ping thing right now.

[nsinnott]

Qualcomm Atheros is a line of Wireless adapters. Sure you're looking at the right adapter here?

 

 

EDIT: whoops, I'm an idiot

[Macboi]

Just now, nsinnott said:

Qualcomm Atheros is a line of Wireless network adapters... Are you sure you're looking at the right adapter here?

I was somewhat confused by that also... but it says that it is Ethernet and the computer also has Intel Centrino Wireless, so I assumed that it was controlling Ethernet.

[paddy-stone]

IMO it'd be better to test the speeds with the same device... at the moment you are trying to deal with 2 different problems as far as I can make out.

I would set up a share on the desktop, connect wirelessly to the share from a laptop at the furthest point you would want to access it from, then do the same at the closest. Now connect with an ethernet cable to the network and do the same tests if possible. You shouldn't have to test at both locations as the speed should be approx the same across gigabit line, unless there are problems on the network itself.

^ this should give you the information you require to show your parents the benefits of wired vs wireless transfers.

 

I know this doesn't address your problem with the homegroups, but I don't use homegroups as I find it horrible so can't assist you there.

[Macboi]

4 minutes ago, nsinnott said:

EDIT: whoops, I'm an idiot

IT happens to the best of us lol

[Macboi]

1 hour ago, brwainer said:

while connected to both the wired and wireless, do the following:

1. Find your default gateway IP (10.0.0.1 in your screenshot)
2. run "arp -a" and find the MAC of the IP from step #1

If the MAC addresses match, then you are on the same network. BTW, the MAC address of the default gateway is what Windows looks at to try to match the network names between wired and wireless.

if this computer had been connected to the wireless back when it had the default SSID, then that would have been saved into the computer with the router's MAC, and that's why it is showing up for the wired now. I am not sure where exactly Windows keeps this or how to clear it out.

 

The name of the network shouldn't prevent homegroup from connecting, but I could be wrong. What I think is more likely is that your router is set up to isolate the wired and wireless networks from each other - this would be an option you can disable if that's the case. To test, do this:

1. Connect one computer to wired and one to wireless
2. Follow these instructions on both so that they respond to pings (by default Windows does not): https://kb.iu.edu/d/aopy
3. Try to ping the computers from each other. Also, make sure that their IPs are in the same subnet (in your picture above, 10.0.0.19/24 means the subnet is 10.0.0.1-10.0.0.254)

If the computers can ping each other and are in the same subnet, there shouldn't be any networking reason preventing HomeGroup.

 

Fore the sake of simplicity in typing:

Albert = The first computer I tried that only has 100Mb/s Ethernet

Norman = The second computer that is having Ethernet connectivity issues

 

I ran the arp -a command and the router had the same MAC whether the laptops were plugged in via Ethernet or not.  I further went on to perform the procedure mentioned and tried to ping the different computers.

 

Here are the results:

• Albert wireless ping Norman wireless: Time out
• Albert wireless ping Norman wired: Time out
• Norman wireless ping Albert wireless: Success
• Norman wireless ping Albert wired: Success
• Albert wired ping Norman wired: Time out
• Norman wired ping Albert wired: Success

So basically Norman does not like incoming activity and times out.

 

This is really starting to become a much more complicated thing than I anticipated. - Why I have never really liked networking.

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, Macboi said:

 

Fore the sake of simplicity in typing:

Albert = The first computer I tried that only has 100Mb/s Ethernet

Norman = The second computer that is having Ethernet connectivity issues

 

I ran the arp -a command and the router had the same MAC whether the laptops were plugged in via Ethernet or not.  I further went on to perform the procedure mentioned and tried to ping the different computers.

 

Here are the results:

• Albert wireless ping Norman wireless: Time out
• Albert wireless ping Norman wired: Time out
• Norman wireless ping Albert wireless: Success
• Norman wireless ping Albert wired: Success
• Albert wired ping Norman wired: Time out
• Norman wired ping Albert wired: Success

So basically Norman does not like incoming activity and times out.

 

This is really starting to become a much more complicated thing than I anticipated. - Why I have never really liked networking.

On Norman, check the Location/Type of the network and make sure it is Private or Home. It sounds like Norman is in Public mode for both networks - this means it uses a different firewall protocol that blocks everything inbound and disables certain outbound services also. Each network has its own setting for this so you have to change each one seperately.