HI all plz help, i have a Belkin mimo router, 20 mg broadband, i connected my main desktop pc (XP Pro)to the router etc and am able to connect to the internet all ok, i connected my new laptop which runs vista Ultimate and was able to connect to the net but was having problems gaming online, someone suggested placing the laptop outside the NAT or dmz, my router/lan is 192.168.2.1, my tower using XP Pro uses 192.168.2.2 so i added my wireless laptop to the dmz and it uses 192.168.2.3, (i placed 2.3 outside the NAT in dmz) i was able to connect to gaming servers all ok! but for some reason my XP tower on 2.2 has lost all connection to the net unless i change the NAT dmz IP back to 192.168.2.2 which then allows me to go online, to play games online i need to change the dmz back n forth? anyone have any ideas what im doing wrong? i hope you understand lol
thanks

Ok, first off, whoever told you to put the laptop in the DMZ is an idiot. Get it out of there and back behind your firewall.

Second, laptops are NOT the best gaming devices so don't expect it to perform like a gaming PC.

Third, wireless sucks for gaming. Use a wired connection from laptop to router to game with.

Try the wired connection and see if things don't improve....

Curt this isnt' what he asked. The DMZ just ignores the NAT firewall, and if he has firewall programs, he should be fine. The tower lost conncetion... if you put it back in the NAT and it fixes it... It shouldn't be doing this. I can get away with this on my computers.
Put the laptop in the DMZ and on the tower compter, go to Start > Run and type cmd
a dos box will open, and type IPconfig
please copy what shows up and let me know.

I'm here to help as best I can...

DMZ shouldn't normally cause loss of connection to other clients. It might be on that device, read the instructions. Might be some other setting being affected when you select dmz for the laptop??

DMZ in most cases that I have seen allows complete access (via NAT/PAT) to a select machine. It defeats any protection that the router might have offered.

Some poorly written games unfortunately can only run in DMZ. Kind of a bad situation, you should be able to block ports.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

Hmmm....I must have misread the OP. I thought he was talking about gaming performance. I see upon rereading it the issue is with a PC in the LAN (ie: behind the firewall) losing connectivity when he puts his gaming laptop in the DMZ so I stand corrected.

I will reiterate, putting the laptop in the DMZ is moot and useless as it will not enhance gaming performance. Thus, keeping it in the LAN (ie: behind the firewall/NAT) will stop the issue from happening and that is my best suggestion.

my router/lan is 192.168.2.1, my tower using XP Pro uses 192.168.2.2 so i added my wireless laptop to the dmz and it uses 192.168.2.3, (i placed 2.3 outside the NAT in dmz)

router: 192.168.2.1
PC: 192.168.2.2
Laptop: 192.168.2.3

Ok, this makes sense and as long as the clients have 192.168.2.1 as their Gateway address and the same Subnet Mask, all should work properly.

i was able to connect to gaming servers all ok! but for some reason my XP tower on 2.2 has lost all connection to the net unless i change the NAT dmz IP back to 192.168.2.2 which then allows me to go online

This is confusing and makes no sense, I think the issue at hand would likely be a misconfiguration of the firewall/DMZ settings. Knowing the make/model of the router would be helpful in resolving this issue.

Again, I still think the best solution is to just leave the laptop in the LAN side and everything works. As I've said, putting it in the DMZ is of no benefit to gaming.

Thanks guys for your help/response sorry if i was a bit misleading. The reason i have put the laptop in the dmz is purely to connect to ARMA Online gaming and Sniper Elite servers which unfortunately i cant bypass turning the firewall off etc. My laptop can play the game at medium graphics which is quite good on ARMA and i get a 50ms ping most times on wireless laptop plus sniper elite doesnt require much GPU usage and i can play full res with a very good ping. My laptop wireless speedtests on average 15mg Download with 700kb upload (virgin media) with a 46MS ping time which i think is pretty good i think, my router is belkin N Wireless N Mimo BELKIN F5D8233UK4 300mbps 40Mhz channel mode 1200 feet.
BRANDON i will follow yoru instructions of "Put the laptop in the DMZ and on the tower compter, go to Start > Run and type cmd
a dos box will open, and type IPconfig
please copy what shows up and let me know." and obviously let you know what i get...
thanks again guys, i am trying to read up as much as poss but just cant see why once i put laptop in DMZ, my tower loses all connections. If i take laptop out of DMZ, i can access the net on it but cant use winmx or play online gaming but can connect on the tower strange :)
thanks
Stu

I'm not a big fan of using the DMZ for anything and have managed to forward the ports of any application that needs this kind of exclusive access to the WAN. This process hasn't affected any other pc's on the network.

I'm not sure if this is an option because I'm not a gamer please correct me if I'm wrong... but if it is any help the link below has excellent port forwarding walkthroughs

http://www.portforward.com/

Well this is my IPconfig results from the TOWER whilst the laptop was in DMZ

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Stuio>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 2:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Belkin
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.2
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1

C:\Documents and Settings\Stuio>ping 192.168.2.1

Pinging 192.168.2.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.2.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

C:\Documents and Settings\Stuio>ping www.google.co.uk

Pinging www.google.com [66.102.9.99] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=243
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=243
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=243
Reply from 66.102.9.99: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=243

Ping statistics for 66.102.9.99:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 21ms, Maximum = 27ms, Average = 23ms
why when i get pings like this does Internet explorer or mozilla firefox not load on tower or laptop?
hope some of this helps