|
|
| |
Tech Tips Articles » Home Networking |
|
| |
Home Networking (Jan 22, 2006)
|
| |
A few years ago, it was a very strange thing to have a computer at all. After a while, it got to the point where most folks had a desktop computer sitting in the living room or spare bedroom. These days, however, it is not at all uncommon for each spouse and each child to have a computer. It can easily get to the point where you have five or more computers in your house. Personally, in our house, we have three desktops and a laptop in just one room. Now that is a bit much, but then again I am a certified computer geek…
The point is that with more than one computer you run into problems. Everyone wants to print. Everyone wants to get on the Internet. If you have a scanner, then everyone wants to scan. I think you get the picture. In addition to being very expensive to have a printer, modem, scanner, etc for each computer, it would just take too much time to configure everything and maintain five or so different pieces of equipment. Never fear, there is a simple solution, and that is having a home network. A home network is easy and fairly inexpensive to set up. With this in place, you can have one connection to the internet, one printer, etc that everyone in the house shares. This also makes it much easier to restrict the types of sites and chat rooms that your child may visit while on the computer in their room.
There are essentially two ways to network your house: wired and wireless. Using a wired network actually involves running special computer networking cable through the walls and can be expensive and time consuming. There are ways to network a house through your existing phone line and electrical outlets, however. Still, wireless networking, where every computer connects to the network via radio signals is very easy and inexpensive to setup and use. Further, you can get everything you need to setup a wireless network from a single trip to Radio Shack or Wal-Mart (or pretty much any electronics or computer store).
What you’ll need is a wireless network card for each computer you want to network together. These range in price from $30 up to $100 or so for each computer. I recommend going with a Linksys or Netgear brand network card. These are priced somewhere around $40-$50 and are really the best, in my opinion, for home and small business use. If you will be sharing a high-speed internet connection (DSL, Satellite, Cable, etc), then definitely also buy a network router. If your connection to the internet is via dial-up with a modem then a router may not be a wise choice. In fact, with most modems on the market today, a router probably won’t even work with the network. And that’s all you need. Just simply connect the network card to each computer and install the software that comes with the card. You can then have a single printer (or other piece of hardware) connected to just one of the computers. The other computers on your network can connect to that printer over the wireless network and print.
Now, for the Cool Site of the Week... This week we actually have two sites that will help you with the details of setting up a home network. They are HomeNetHelp.com and home-wireless-network.com. Like most things in life, once you know how to do something it is amazingly simple to do. But, the first time can be a real pain. These sites should help you get your network going. If you run into problems, you can always call your friendly neighborhood computer geek or just send me an email at the address below.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for future articles, please email me at mike@MikeBryant.com.
|
| |
|