The most common reason for forming a home network is to share an internet connection. With broadband internet access becoming almost as common as television, people are today commonly sharing that single pipeline to the internet with all of the computers in their home. This is very easy to do with a home network. You can also do a lot of other things with a home network.
[hidepost=1]
- Share your internet connection
- Share files between computers without using CD-ROMs or USB drives
- Share printers among all of your PCs
- Share multimedia (music and video)
- Play network games
The uses of a home network change every day. Today, some people use their home network for telephone communications. Some people use their home network for home monitoring or even remote control of the electrical systems in their home (turn lights on and off from your computer on a schedule).
Internet Connection Sharing
Sharing an internet connection is the most common request for users of a home network. There are several ways to share a single internet connection among multiple computers.
- Ethernet switch
- Proxy server
- Router
By using an Ethernet switch, you are connecting each of your computers to each other via a switch. Your modem is plugged directly into the switch as if it is another computer. Each computer (and the modem) has it’s own IP address. The benefit of this setup is that each computer will have it’s own, publicly accessible IP address (an IP address is a numerical address representing a computer on a network). This is good if you want each computer on the network to be independently available via the internet, as in the case of a server, for instance. The downside of this setup is that most ISPs do not allow this type of setup. For this to work, your ISP would need to provide several different IP addresses to your account, each being static. This capability is usually something available only to more expensive business accounts.
A proxy server is a computer which acts as a go-between for other computers on the network and the internet. When using the Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) system in Windows XP, you are essentially setting your computer up as a proxy server. This turns your computer into a host. A proxy server must have two NICs installed or one NIC and a modem plugged directly into the computer via a second NIC. This allows one NIC to be used for the uplink to the internet and the second to be used to connect to the rest of the network. All network computers use the host computer as the gateway to the internet. Obviously, the host computer needs to be up and running for any internet access to be had. Proxy server setups are not as common as they used to be for home networks today due to the easy availability of routers.
Routers are the most common method of sharing an internet connection on a network. They are convenient because they combine switch, router and firewall setups all into one unit. The broadband modem is connected directly to the router and the individual computers are connected to their own ports on the router. Like a proxy server, the router communicates with the outside via a single IP address meaning that your ISP does not need to provide multiple IP address. Internally, the router’s switch functionality assigns each network computer an internal IP address, allowing communication between all the computers. In most cases, sharing an internet connection is as simple as plugging in the modem and the PC. Usually, little to no configuration is necessary for something as simple as sharing an internet connection.
Sharing Files and Printers
Before home networking was popular, you would commonly need to make use of CDs or even floppy diskettes to move files between your computers. We all recall what a pain that was, especially when the file you were moving was too big to fit on a floppy diskette. File sharing is incredibly easy today using a network.
I routinely make use of my network to keep me from having to even move files. For example, we use Quickbooks for our internal accounting. The data file for our accounting resides on my computer. However, when my assistant goes into Quickbooks to do some accounting, she opens the data file directly on my computer. We don’t even have to move it.
You can also easily set up a backup server over your network. I will discuss this a little later in the book, but you can actually take an old computer and set it up on your network and use it to backup all of your network files. You would use your network and it’s file sharing capability to perform these backups.
I will discuss how to set all this up later, however today’s operating systems make file sharing very easy. In Windows, when you share a file or folder, it will appear in My Network Places. You can even “map” a drive letter to the network resource, making it even easier to access. As you can tell, opening up file sharing on your network can open up a wide security hole unless you set up some security. Without security, sharing any file on your network effectively shares that file with the entire world. Your firewall is what keeps this from happening.
Sharing a printer is another very useful application for a network. You can buy a single, nice printer and then allow all computers on your network to easily print using the same printer. There are three ways to connect a printer to a network:
- Using a Client PC
- Using a network-enabled printer
- Using a print server
When using a client PC, the printer is directly plugged into one of the PCs in the network. Then, by deciding to share that printer, the host PC opens up access to that printer to other computers in the network. This allows the computer to take print commands via the NIC. This method of printer sharing is very easy to set up and is free (no hardware required). The drawback is that the client computer needs to be on for the printer to be accessible.
A network-enabled printer is a printer which has an NIC built right into it. This allows the printer to connect to your network as if it were another computer. No other computer is required for it to work. I plugs directly into your network.
A print server is a separate network device which interfaces directly with your network (either wired or wireless) and then allows you to plug any printer into it. This method is quite flexible because you can take any printer and turn it into a network-enabled printer. Using wireless technology, you can place the printer anywhere in your home or office and print to it over the network. The printer doesn’t even need to be in the same room as a computer. As long as the network can reach it, you can print. There are some potential inconveniences associated with this setup, but it does allow flexibility of location.
Multimedia Sharing
Multimedia is really the new wave of home networking. The idea is that you can connect your TV, your stereo, your computers all into a single network. What kinds of things can you do with all this?
- Watch TV on your PC
- Use your PC as a digital video recorder
- Stream internet audio to your home stereo
- Play PC-based MP3 files on your home stereo
- Watch TV using your home cable connection via remote access
- View PC-based video files on your TV
Using a media hub, you can connect your home entertainment center to your home network. A media hub will allow you to perform capabilities like those listed above.
Many of us are familiar with the TiVo, the big black box people plug into their entertainment system that allows them to record and pause live TV. The TiVo is a digital video recorder (DVR). You can view the TV schedule on your TiVo and easily choose to record any show you want. You can get a “season pass” to any show whereby the unit will automatically record every instance of that show whenever it plays. You can, through the use of voting, “train” the system on what kind of programs you like and have it automatically record them. The current TiVo models also make use of the internet to allow viewing of some internet content, playing podcasts, etc. The unit can use a standard phone line to retrieve program schedules, but you can also connect it right to your network and use your internet connection to download schedules. Under the surface of the box, it is actually a Linux-based computer.
Another concept that is relatively new is the Media Center PC. A Media Center PC is a computer which runs a special version of Windows called Windows Media Center Edition. The computer is usually equipped with a large hard drive, lot of memory and a fast processor. The computer can play DVDs and work with digital cameras easily. Many times they have radio and TV tuners. The computer can b e used as a digital video recorder, digital music library, etc. The Media Center edition of Windows works just like any other version of Windows XP, however it can be controlled using a wireless remote control using a very simple on-screen interface which looks kind of like a TiVo.
Network Gaming
Computer games are a favorite pastime for kids as well as adults. They are fun to play sometimes by yourself (you play the computer), however playing over the network adds a level of interactivity to it. You can play your friends and many times have an internet chat while you play. Gaming has always placed high demands on the performance of computer hardware, and it is no different for network components. Since firewalls are designed to block incoming connections, they can easily stop online gaming. It is important that you have a firewall which is configurable, allowing you to allow certain applications through (namely, your games).
[/hidepost]
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
