Avoiding the pitfalls of home networking, by David Geer

Contact me at david@geercom.com, or at 440-964-9832 (Fax:440-964-2172).

ComputerBits

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Home Networking

Plan ahead for best results ... by David Geer

Home networking is becoming extremely more popular. What is home networking? What types of networking are there to choose from? How do you go about putting it in while avoiding the traps and mishaps that are hidden in the process?

Real home networking is getting some kind of infrastructure in the walls, into hardware, onto your computers and perhaps even into the airwaves. Why would you want it? As soon as you have more than one computer in the house, you will see the advantages. You can share one Internet connection among many users, saving money by not getting more than one service provider. You can share devices like printers, connect your laptop or other mobile device to the network when at home, and keep the phone lines open for calls and such. Cost is also a great reason to home network. It's cheaper to put in than a second phone line or a printer. There is a huge savings on money and headaches and complications in tied up phone lines and computers and kids (and parents too) screaming for phone or Internet access. Kinds of home networking

There are four kinds of home networking that you can run in your house. Here they are, and according to Kathy Ivens, author of Home Networking for Dummies, in order of most popular today (though this is changing).

Ethernet - standard category 5 or cat 5 cable. This is the kind you find in most offices.

Wireless - radio frequencies - usually based on the 802.11 protocol.

Powerline - where you actually just connect your computer to the nearest outlet and the system uses the unused bandwidth within electrical lines in the house. Your electric bill won't go up. You can get "only" 10Megabits per second out of it. However, as Kathy puts it, "I have yet to meet the person who could tell the difference." (Between that and a faster connection when downloading a file for instance).

The fourth is telephone, which does the same thing as powerline but with the phone line. It uses unused bandwidth in the POTS, the plain old telephone system.

Kathy Ivens prefers the powerline network because it is as effortless as wireless, as fast as you need, and it has none of the drawbacks of wireless. What drawbacks does wireless have? Interference if you have cordless phones or pipes in your walls and a lack of security if you don't have ample protections. Anyone in the neighborhood can log on to your wireless network and pull down files or use your Internet connection with some basic equipment.

Other drawbacks of wireless include hooking into other things like a shared Internet connection. If you get cable, you have to get wired for cable. Your wireless network still has to get to the Internet through a wired Internet connection. You need special equipment between your wireless computers and your wired Ethernet connection, which goes to your broadband connection. (The exception would be "stationary wireless ISPs", which we won't go into, but you would still need special hardware.)

"Telephone is just as fast and easy as powerline but there is not a telephone jack in every room", says Ms Ivens. There are electric outlets in every room for powerline though. Powerline used to be clunky and slow, now it's mostly USB (Universal Serial Bus, works with most devices) and it's quick. What are the pitfalls?

The hardest part of the job is running cable in your walls. Either you can't do it because you are a renter or don't want to because you are planning to sell sometime soon. People also don't want holes in the walls that sometimes have to be made to run the cable. It's also hard to find an open run of wall space where the cable can pass from point A to point B easily. If you know exactly what is in your walls everywhere, you will be much further ahead. The actual networking once the cabling is done is comparatively easy.

You have to know what you need ahead of time because you have to have some kind of network device attached to every computer, whether you open the box (computer) to install a NIC card (network interface card) in it or you attach one through a USB port. All devices come in all these types. "Many computers are coming with the NIC built on to the motherboard" already, says Kathy Ivens.

And a list of pitfalls and things to know:

1. There aren't any pitfalls for installing telephone line or powerline networking. You don't have to run cable because you use what's already there.

2. Here's an additional consideration before deciding on equipment. Speed on your computer or network doesn't equal a faster Internet connection. The two are unrelated.

3. Additional pitfalls include security issues. You have to have a firewall, which is a piece of hardware or software that keeps people from gaining unallowed access to your network.

If you use any network type but Ethernet, you will not only need anti-virus and a firewall but also to protect your topology (the structure of your network). With powerline for example, if you have any neighbors with powerline too then you all meet up more or less on the same larger network, at the local transformer. By using encryption and an encrypted password, you can protect your network's hard drives and any data flowing around is encrypted too. The similar use of the telephone wiring is more secure than the powerline.

Home Networking Tips

1. Make up your mind that you are going to plan carefully and do it right. According to Kathy Ivens, author of Linksys Networks the Official Guide, it only adds around 20 minutes per computer to set up the network right.

2. Thanks to information available free on the Internet and myriad books there is loads of help available for do it yourselfers. Linksys has some good stuff at their site. Linksys also owns most of the home market for networking.

3. You don't have to contact your ISP to share a single DSL connection. You can buy the equipment you need at a reasonable price and do it on your own.

4. The equipment and the books you will need are carefully marked and written, more now for the nonprofessional than every before. Your new hardware should be labeled with easy to read information.

5. Save and use any information that came with your computer. This will tell you what ports you have and where so you can check specs and get compatible network hardware.

6. Ground yourself before opening a computer so you don't fry the board with static electricity.

7. Set the computers up off the floor so they don't suck in dust.

8. Use a surge protector with phone line protection as well. Networked computers can all be knocked out by the same one electrical surge from lightning. Your phone lines are in more danger than your electrical outlets as the transformer is grounded while phone infrastructure is not. Unplug regular and DSL modems in a lightning storm. Only wireless connectivity won't transfer an electric surge.

9. The easiest way to set up a home network today, according to Kathy Ivens, is to have Windows XP on all machines. It installs and sets up your network and devices without even using a wizard. As long as you are buying hardware on Microsoft's compatibility list, it works fine. Other windows OS aren't really that much harder, but will take you about 10 minutes per machine instead of 10 seconds. Most new computers come with XP anyway.