hey guys well, we all are a part of a network (cable internet) connected by CAT5 cables ok, the thing here is there are these 4 guys who use the LAN IP to connect to the net and da rest of the ppl (around 50-odd) use LIVE IPs to connect (by loggin in a LOGIN PAGE, that even i use - 172.16.29.29) well, these 4 guys seem to have only 1 LIVE IP so i guess they are going thru a proxy software like wingate or winroute, etc so what i want to know is 1. can they use direct IPs to connect to da net ?? if and how can they do that ? 2. why is the LAN FILE SHARING (using IPMSG 2.02) really slow with these guys only and not with the other guys 3. can LAN IPs be port-scanned and how ??? is it easy to do it ??? 4. why is it that with the other guys on da network (on live IPs) i share stuiff @ 2MBPS and these guys only at 4-7KBPS ??? anyway to speed it up ??? Please answer these questions for me Take care y'all Chetan

first ooff lets get some teminology right...what do you meen by live ip's and direct, ie dhcp or static. The way you say this net is setup is a little confuding. Why in the firs place are the 4 coms proxied, what was the initial purpose of the proxy. and to try to answer your ?'s 1.(need more info) 2.If these guys are using one connection to access the rest of the net, of course it will be slow. there all using the same connection which probably grants more bandwith to the first person to use. I don't know your hardware but the other 50 if wired are wired with routers, which help send packets faster and more efficiantly 3.i know its possible to port scan any computer within the same lan, but i don't know how 4.The Proxy connection could be limiting data transfer rates to try and be smart. Somthing like that maybe...the only way to speed it up is to drop the proxy and make them part of the normal network. If you supply more detail about the setup, and resons for the Proxy and whatnot then more people can be of more help :)