Q.  If I have two TCP/IP networks on the same machine, one bound to the network card and the other to the Internet via a dial up connection, will Internet Explorer give preference to the local Intranet? There is no modem sharing software running on this Windows '98 machine and the two networks are not connected via a router.

Windows '95 and '98 fully support TCP/IP and are able to both use a dial up networking connection to the Internet and network card connection to servers and other PCs. Provided you configure Windows properly, you can select the default device that Windows will use.

This is done by setting the parameters in the TCP/IP properties under Network Neighbourhood. To do this, right click on the Network Neighbourhood icon and select Properties or go Start, Settings Control Panel and choose the networking icon.

Scroll down the list until you see TCP/IP protocol for your network card and select the properties button.

Ensure that the IP address and subnet is valid for your network. In order for TCP/IP to be able to access the other computers on your network each computer must be assigned a unique IP address and must be on the same subnet. If you have not already assigned a subnet, you can use and IP address of 192.168.0.x where x is the unique number from 1 to 254 given to each computer and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. For example, you might assign an address of 192.168.0.100 to your Intranet server and 192.168.0.1 to your computer.

Reboot the computer when prompted and after the computer has restarted, you should be able to access your Intranet by typing in the IP address of the server. In our example, you would type in http://192.168.0.100 in your browser to access the Intranet.

Typing in the IP address can be a real nuisance because if you get a number wrong you will not be able to access the Intranet. By creating a name entry in your system host file (C:\WINDOWS\HOSTS) you can access your Intranet by name rather than by IP number.

To do this, copy the HOSTS.SAM file from your WINDOWS directory to HOSTS then open up the file in Notepad.

To add a new entry to the hosts file simply go to the bottom of the file and type in the IP address, a few tabs and the name. Note that the # symbol denotes a comment which is ignored by Windows.

In our example you would type in 192.168.0.100 intranet # entry for our Intranet

Save the file, and after you reboot the computer, you will be able to access the Intranet by typing Intranet, rather than the IP address into your browser.

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