The vast majority of you out there have an IPv4 type address. This is the type we’re all familiar with, that being the four octets of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. Many of you also know the difference in IPv4 classes as well, such as the fact that home wireless routers assign Class C addresses.

Something that has been a legitimate problem ever since the internet as a whole gained popularity is the fact there are only so many public assignable IPs, as in IP addresses that are world accessible and not the ones assigned by your home router.

Some big corporations realized this early on and snatched up all they could. A good example of this is General Electric Company. Every single world accessible IP address that starts with a 3 belongs to them.

The solution to running out of world accessible addresses has actually been around for a while, that being IPv6. Instead of the IPv4 32-bit length, IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long and alphanumeric. An example IPv6 address would be 3ffe:1900:4545:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf. It’s pretty darned big, and it opens up an enormous amount of assignable addresses, killing the space problem in very short order.

In the U.S., the problem has been that our ISPs here have been very slow to adapt IPv6. Reasons cited for the slow adaptation have mainly been cost, as it’s not cheap to implement whatsoever.

However, after all this time (IPv6 was defined in 1998, if you can believe it,) U.S. ISPs are finally starting to get the hint that more address space is desperately needed. They absolutely have to get on the ball with this, because otherwise the IPv4s are expected to be exhausted by 2012. Once the IPv4 addresses are all gone, that’s it. ISPs would literally be unable to provide internet connectivity service to any new customers at all. Bear in mind this is not just for the home but also counts for wireless smartphone internet use as well.

The requests by the major ISPs for IPv6 address space have taken a big jump lately and that’s great because they’re preparing for the IPv4 address exhaustion. If all goes well there should (fingers crossed) hopefully be a seamless transition from 4 to 6.

Will you need to buy a new router to support IPv6 when it comes around?

Most likely not, as there are transition methods already available that can make IPv6 connectivity available thru IPv4, so chances are you probably won’t have to change around any of your network hardware.

And for those of you using an older version of Windows like XP, that does have IPv6 support as it is included with that OS. Windows 2000 on the other hand does not. But if determined enough, there are ways to get it enabled if you’re a diehard Win2000 fan.

When it come to any OS that’s *nix-based, there’s a lot I don’t complain about compatibility-wise due to the proprietary nature of a lot of computer hardware.

For example, if I had a Microsoft wireless keyboard that had Windows-only features on it and it just would not work under Linux, would I get upset about this? Not at all. It’s a proprietary keyboard (custom “Windows only” keys) meant for a proprietary operating system (Windows) using proprietary software (Windows drivers and control software) – and I personally feel that keyboards so unbelievably proprietary like that completely suck anyway because they’re just too “tied” to a particular OS. Continued

1000BaseTX: Ethernet specification for unshielded twisted pair cabling that is used to transmit data at 1 Gbps (gigabits per second) with a distance limitation of 220 meters per segment.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

A router is any device that acts as a gateway between 2 or more separate networks. In our case, that means that the local network is connected to the Internet, and vice versa. The router ignores traffic local traffic or traffic it is not configured to handle, but when Internet access is attempted from within the local network, it springs into action. With NAT (Network Address Translation), the router shares the Internet connection to all the computers connected to the local network. The router keeps track of the originating local computer and manages the connection with the outside Internet server. If a computer on the Internet attempts a connection with the router or to a local computer past the router, the router denies the connection unless the router was specially configured to allow that connection.

Many routers can treat the wireless LAN (WLAN) as a separate network from the wired LAN. This is often done because wireless networks are easy to break into. The idea is that people can keep their wired computers away from the untrusted wireless network. The router will still share the Internet connection (WAN) to both the wireless and wired LANs, regardless of this configuration.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

Sharing files and folders between computers is one of the most common applications for a network. You can share single files, folders, even whole drives (bad idea!) if you want to.

Sharing a folder is convenient because you simply have to tell Windows to share the folder rather than tell it to specifically share every file in that folder. Windows will automatically create a folder called “Shared Documents” which has been designated to be shared on your home network. To view this folder, launch the Windows® Explorer (Start / All Programs / Accessories / Windows Explorer) and then select My Computer. Your Shared Documents folder will be present. ANY FILE you place in this folder will be available on your home network to other participating computers.

You might not want to be limited to moving everything into “Shared Folders” in order to share it, however. So, you can tell Windows to share any folder you want on your hard drive. Before continuing, please note:

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

I have discussed previously in this book how IP addressing and DHCP servers operate. If you are interested in some of the technologies behind this, back up and have a read. For now, let’s just get down to business and get you sharing an internet connection.

The first thing you might need to do is configure your router. The good thing here is that many routers will automatically configure themselves to work with most cable services. More times than not, when I have set up a simple network, all of my computers can simply get online as soon as I plug them into the router. However, if you are using DSL or if your cable modem provider requires username/password authentication, you will need to perform a little router configuration. Also, if your ISP is providing you with a static (fixed) IP addresses, you will need to configure your router to use this.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

Q: (Wired/Wireless) All my router’s lights are on and will not go off. When I try to connect to the router, no network connectivity is present. What should I do?

A: On all routers there is a “reset” option. It is a button physically on the router. If after a reset this does not work – power off the router, wait ten seconds and then turn it back on.

Q: (Wired) My router can’t seem to establish a connection to the internet or to my home network. All the lights are on but the data does not seem to be transferring. What can I do?

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

This chapter is a video presentation.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

In order to get your PC’s to talk, it is necessary to perform some simple configuration. Here are the items that will need to be visited:

• IP Addresses. Each network adapter needs to have an IP address. Luckily, this functionality is usually taken care of automatically by your switch or router.
• Installation of Microsoft Network Client software. This is the software that allows your computer to share files and printers.
• Give your computers each unique names. Each computer will get a computer name and that will identify the computer on the network. Each computer on the network needs to have a unique name.
• Assign workgroup. Windows organizes computers on a network into workgroups.
• Blah blah blah

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

This chapter is a video presentation.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

This chapter is a video presentation.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

I discussed previously the benefits and the downfalls of a wireless network. Now, let’s put one together.

Installing Wireless Adapters

In order to access a wireless network, each computer needs to have a wireless adapter installed. As discussed previously, there are different styles of them available. Each one comes with instructions for installation and this should be your main guide. However, I will try to provide some basic outline of how to go about it.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

This chapter is a video presentation.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

This chapter is a video presentation.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

So far, if you have been following the course, you should have an idea of some of the hardware that goes into creating a network, namely:

• Network interface cards
• Switches
• Routers
• Wireless Access Points
• Print servers

Going to the store to pick out your equipment can be a little confusing. Usually, you’re looking at a bunch of boxes each promoted to be the best thing and it is hard to tell the difference. Well, I’m going to help you out as much as I can.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.