Hi, this is not usual if the network is configured correctly.
Are your laptops connected to each other without a router to provide a DHCP IP address?
When they are not connecting, you can check the IP address of each computer and see if they are on the same network and network mask. You could look at systems settings, the network then ethernet. It would looks something like this.
There may be other reasons so to get a better idea on what might be going on you could provide a copy of BomeNet.log of each machine.
It would be in location /tmp/BomeNet.log
This post describes where log files are kept on different supported platforms.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz