Building a Basic Home Network

Building a Basic Home Network

Filed under Computer Tips

May 1
To build a home network doesn’t have to be complicated. All you have to do is follow five easy steps.

First question: You should ask yourself is why do you want a home network? Not long ago this would have been the main question.

But today with all the advancements that have been made is why wouldn’t you want a home networking system.

With the correct networking system in your home you can have and share high-speed internet throughout the home.
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A. With a home network you can share high-speed internet access with any computer in the house.

B. You can control what the people on your network are viewing on the internet, like share data files, and multimedia with any computer on the network.

C. You can keep an eye on your home while you are away at work, by turning the webcam on and accessing your network at work or where ever you are.

D. You can automate the backup for all your computers and use a network printer in the living room to print documents or pictures from the computer that is in the bedroom.

E. You can do all this and more with all your computers and printers by connecting them to a home networking system. Even most TV’s and entertainment systems have networking capabilities.

F. This all can be accomplished by hooking your Windows PC’s together. You can also have network-oriented products which makes the network easier and more useful to use. From networked harddrives that let’s you create shared folders for all the family members that can be accessed from the home network or the internet if your away from home.

G. There are many home network systems that you can use to maximize the effort and time that you spend on buying and setting it up. So with all this said, let’s get started.

Step 1: HIGH-SPEED INTERNET:

You can build a home network without high-speed internet, but it is so much sweeter with it. High-speed internet sort of makes the whole networking thing worthwhile. First you need to choose a broadband, or DSL provider. Broadband is usually furnished by Cable TV providers. While DSL is provided by telephone or satellite TV companies. You will want to pick the one with the highest rate of data transfer for the buck. (Or the best bang for your buck).

You will have set up an appointment with the cable, telephone, or satellite companies, and then wait for them to show up from anywhere between 8am to 5pm weekdays. Another way is to go to Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart or some other electronics store that provides these services and they will sell you a kit. This kit includes the cable modem, or DSL modem, the router, and instructions to set it up. Then they will automatically register you with a provider for your new service.

You might have heard horror stories about setting up a home network, about all you had to go through to get it up and running. These days installing and setting up a home network system is really simple with all the advancements that have been made.

You will want to stick the CD into your computer and then follow the instructions. First it ask you to plug your router into the phone or cable tv line first.

This will take a minute or two to find itself and register itself. Then you will plug your computer into the router, and fill out a form to identify yourself and billing information.

Make sure that your computer’s network settings are set to “Automatically get the IP address”, presto you will be connected to the internet.

After this any computer that you plug into the router will be seen by the internet and the other computers that are connected to the network.

IF this doesn’t happen you will probably have to run Microsoft’s networking wizard.

Step 2: Smartening Up Your Computers

Once your router is functioning and your computers are plugged in, you’ve got to make sure all the computers can see not just the Internet, but each other as well.

For Vista machines, you’re not going to have to do much besides wait. This version of Windows is much smarter about networking. Vista PCs will simply find each other on the network as long as they’re all in the same IP subnet

If they don’t, Vista has a couple of network fix it wizards as well as the “Setup a home network” wizard for you to fall back upon. Windows XP machines, on the other hand, are a mixed bag.

Those in the same IP subnet should see each other, but there’s a chance they won’t. You’ll be better off running the “Set up a home network” wizard right away for XP, which available off the Network Neighborhood screen.

Just run this wizard on every XP machine individually. The most thinking you’ll do there is picking a workgroup name for your network.

Step 3: Understanding Your Router

That router is now the heart of your home network—which is good. That’s because it’s doing several important jobs.

First, the router is the outward face of your Internet connection. To the phone, cable or satellite company, your Internet account is represented by just one Internet address.

If you look on your router’s basic setup page, you’ll see that address at the top, generally labeled something like “WAN IP address”. This address is all that the provider or anyone on the Internet can see of your network. The router maintains that external address and hands out a bunch of internal addresses to the computers in your house, typically using a different IP addressing scheme than the public one being used by your provider. The process of translating traffic between the internal and external addresses is called Network Address Translation (NAT) and the process for handing out those addresses automatically is called the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).

NAT is done because the TCP/IP network protocol was never intended to support the millions of users, devices and Web sites that currently populate the Internet. There simply aren’t enough addresses to go around, so one per customer is all they can manage and even then they need to play cycling games so that address will change every few weeks.

On the internal side, you can set up whatever IP addressing scheme you’d like using your router’s DHCP settings.

This looks like Sanskrit, but don’t panic: For the most part you can leave it at its default settings. Most routers default to a 192.168.X.X address scheme. It’s those last two X’s that concern you. The Second to last X determines your subnet. So

PCs addressed as 192.168.1.X are all in the same subnet and should see each other just fine. One that’s addressed as 192.168.0.X will be left out in the cold. That last X will change for every device you plug into the network. The router, for example, might be 192.168.X.1. The first PC might be 192.168.X.2 and so on. That last X can be any number between 1 and 254, so you’ve got plenty of addresses to go around inside your home—no worries about running out. The reason to stick with the default 192.168.0.X or 192.168.1.X scheme is because that particular range is not rout-able on the Internet.

That means anything hacking past your firewall will have some trouble accessing the PCs behind it. Another non-rout-able addressing scheme is 10.10.X.X. You can set your scheme to run anyway you’d like, but those types of schemes are safest.

And speaking of safe, your router is also your firewall. This is critical to a safe network. A good stateful inspection firewall keeps the bad guys off your home network, and believe me the bad guys are out there. Get a firewall and make sure it stays updated. Just log into it every few weeks and it will tell you if it needs a software update. That’s as easy as downloading a file and hitting “save”. Your network could be hacked within 20 to 30 minutes easily.

Step 4: Setup Wireless

The router may or may not be doing is providing wireless access. If your router has antennas your wireless pc’s will see it almost immediately. But don’t let it go at that, because the bad part is that if your wireless pc can see the network. Then anyone’s wireless pc can see your network.

Anyone withing 300 feet(indoors) or 600 yards (outdoors) can see your signal. The network outside are considered public and the router is basically a radio (transmitting a radio frequency). The wireless network is considered to be part of the internal network, so the firewall will not block anyone from locking on to the signal. So basically anyone outside can see anything that is connected to your computers. This would be a good time to introduce some security to your network.

Most routers will offer several types of wireless security options. One of which is WEP or (Wired Equivalent Privacy), the other is WPA2 (WiFi Protected Access). Either will give you enough protection though WPA2 is a little tougher to hack. XP users has some

trouble with any wireless security higher than WEP. Vista can handle anything with aplomb, so it would be best to stick with WPA2. Setting up the wireless security is again just a few short series of steps.

First: Pick a channel (you can stick to the default unless there are a lot of other wireless routers around, especially in apartment buildings, offices, stores, and etc…

Second: The router will ask you for a name to assign to wireless network. Do not stick with what the router offers, use a unique name that you could only have access to, this is called (SSID) if you speak geek lingo.

Third: The router will ask you for a security key, and will usually offer one of it’s own. Which ever you choose, besure to go with a strong password. You won’t have to use this password very often. Use a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols in your security key so that it will be hard to crack. Hackers will not usually spend much time on hard security key words. It’s much easier for them to just go down the block till they find one that is easier to hack. Be sure to write this security key down and store it a safe place.

Fourth: The router will ask you for a security question. Try to answer that question with a unique answer that only you will know. Even if a hacker can get past the SSID, they still have to answer the security question. It would be a good idea to change this SSID security key every few months or so. Once you have this setup the computers and equipment that are connected to your network will be able to sign on every time they are turned on.

Step 5: Last Thoughts on Wires and Ports

Now that you have your Home Network up and running. Your computers should have no problem being able to see the internet and each other. Whether they are wired or wireless. When wiring your network be sure to stick with CAT 5e or Cat 6 Ethernet patch cables. These cables are designed to carry gigabit-speed data. Even if your router won’t carry but Megabyte right now. The newer ones will be able to carry gigabyte speed.

The faster the router the faster file transfers, or movies that are hi-def TV content or playing multi-player games. If you have more equipment that requires ports that you can hook-up to the router. Most routers carry only four ports, but you are in luck that you can go online or to your nearest electronics store and pickup a hub or switch that is gigabyte capable. They are easy to hookup with just plugging the hub into one of the ports on the rear of the router. Then you can go from 4 ports, to 8, 12, or more ports depending on how many your need.

You can add more security for wireless, webcams for watching the house when your not at home. You can have firewall parental controls so kids can’t access content on the web that is questionable. Now these are just the basic steps to get your home network up and running. As time goes on you will find there are many enhancements made to the routers of tomorrow!

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Jesse Auburg Online Marketing entrepreneur

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Tagged as: Best Buy, cable, Circuit City, computer, data files, DSL, Ethernet, home, home networking, internet providers, multimedia, passwords, ports, printer, protection, router, satellite, security, SSID, Vista, Walmart, WEP, WPA2, XP

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