i have a small network with one xp home box, one mandriva 2007.1 box as an admin station, and six mandriva 2007.1 boxes used for processing. there are more mandriva boxes than xp home will allow to be connected at once. for this reason i want to be able to count how many of the mandriva boxes are currently connected. i figure, if i can do that, i can write a script that will automatically log on and off when a connection becomes available. what's the easiest way i can use the admin box to count how many connections the xp home box is currently serving? thanks, BabaG

netstat -an will show you all the connections.

You would be advised to install xp pro not home with its ten user limit vs home's five user limit. Guantanamo bay is a National Disgrace! End it NOW!

thanks to you both. i'll definitely be looking into netstat. main question in that regard would be how to use it on my mandriva admin box to count how many total connections the xp box is serving. it makes sense to me that i could use it to see how many connections the box i run netstat on is serving, but how i'd use it to find out how many connections a remote box is serving seems confusing to me. as for xp pro, my network gear has a capacity up to sixteen boxes so if i ever grew to that capacity i'd still have to go through the process i'm using here. that being the case, i'll just stick with what i've got, for now, at least. thanks again, BabaG

I think I found a way to change the XP connection limit. http://www.mydigitallife.info/2005/...

found this in regard to the above link: http://www.speedguide.net/read_arti... the relevant part of the posting is this: Because you are discussing two different things. Your problem is to do with the numbers of simulatneous network connections that a 2K or XP PC can make. This inlcudes any networked items you are connected to such as networked printers. The limit is to prevent 2K and XP being used as servers. Once one of the connections is finished with then you can connect to another as long as the total is ten or less. This patch on the other hand is to do with the number of connection attempts allowed in any unit time, i.e. 10 per second. Once one of these attempts succeeds and the connection is opened both ways then the next attempt can start, i.e. the attempts are queued and freed from the queue at 10 a second. So that in total you could have as many connections as you want, within the limit of your PCs capacity (RAM, CPU speed etc.) the only things is that you can only make 10 attempts a second. If you wanted to make a 100 connection attempts then it would take a total of 10 seconds to make the connections all things being equal. Thus unlike your problem which limits the number of network connections you can make on a LAN to 10, irresepctive of how long you wait, the TCP/IP concurrent limit only limits the speed at which you connect to 10 a second but will allow any number as long as the connections are made at 10 a second. When your system tries to make more than 10 a second then you will see the aforementioned entry in your System Event Viewer. bottom line is that this is a eula issue. increasing the number of possible connections, even if it worked, would violate the eula. thanks everyone, BabaG

If you're really concerned about the EULA, then you are going to have to do what wanderer said and upgrade the OS, which you didn't want to do.