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Do you really need a network for home computing?

By Riley Gay

There was a time, not very long ago, when having a personal computer in your home would put you in a fairly elite minority.

With PCs, and even notebook computers, dropping in price, it’s not unusual now for a family to have two, or even more, computers in the house.

In that regard at least, Warner area resident Fred Aldous and his family typify today’s multi-computer household.

Besides the desktop computer Fred uses in his home office, there is the laptop he takes along on his assignments as principal sound engineer for many of Fox Sport’s major broadcast events.

His daughter Rachael has her own desktop computer, although she may be trading it in soon for a laptop she can take with her when she leaves for college this fall.

Fred’s wife, Beverly, will soon be getting her own desktop computer, courtesy of Delta Airlines, with whom she’s been employed for the past 30 years.

Along with tracking her work schedule, she’ll be using it to manage the household finances, among other things.

This arrangement works pretty well and has helped cut down on the sparring for computer time that they had to cope with when they were a single-computer family.

It doesn’t, however, eliminate it completely.

The problem is that Fred’s desktop computer is hooked up to the only printer in the house.

“If Bev or Rachael wants to print anything”, he says, “they would still have to use the computer in my office.”

And if they should eventually get a broadband Internet connection installed on it, you can bet that Fred’s computer will be even more popular with the rest of the family.

Sharing files between computers in the Aldous household is currently accomplished mainly via “sneakernet”—copying them to a removable disk and walking it from one computer to another. Good exercise, maybe, but not very practical.

On top of that, Fred needs to be able to synchronize files between his desktop and laptop machines on a regular basis, and to share an accounting program with Beverly’s new computer.

You’d think there would be a better way to manage all of these computing resources. And, in fact, there is: By setting up a home network.

With a home network, sharing files and resources couldn’t be easier. And installing one can be a simple and relatively low-cost project.

“Sharing the printer is the biggest advantage in networking our computers”, Fred contends, “and not having to buy another printer will make up for the cost of setting up a network.”

Being able to share files between computers, and the added ability to use the larger storage space available on the office machine, are further benefits Fred points to for wanting to network the household’s various computers.

Throw in the ability to share a broadband Internet connection and there’s no reason not to set up a home network.

With the number of home networking kits on the market, how you choose to connect your home computers depends, in part, on how you use them and where in the house they are located.

If file transfer speed is important to you, setting up a tried-and-true Ethernet network is your best bet.

Besides a 100 Mbps transfer rate, the cost of using an Ethernet cable setup can be a relatively inexpensive solution.

In Fred’s situation, materials to build a system to network the family’s three desktop computers would run less than $100, including cables, network cards and a basic hub.

Adding his laptop to the network would entail purchasing a PCMCIA for an additional $100 or less. The main disadvantages of this type of setup are the need to pull cable throughout the house to each computer, and the added requirement of installing a network card in each desktop machine. You’ll also need an open PCI slot in each desktop computer to accommodate a network interface card (NIC).

If taking your computers apart or routing Ethernet cable through walls and under carpets doesn’t appeal to you, there are two types of networking systems that use the wiring already installed in your home—A/C and telephone lines.

With each, you simply install a device on the USB or parallel port of the computer you want to network, and then plug it into either the phone or electrical outlet on the wall.

Data transfer will not interfere with phone or power transmission and you can set up your network anywhere you can find a wall outlet. The transfer speed with this type of network is considerably less, about 10 Mbps, but still fast enough for a home network.

Setting up this type of network will cost about $100 per computer, though internal PCI card versions are available for a bit less.

Check out the Intelogis PassPort A/C network kit or the D-Link DHN-920 10Mb USB Phoneline Network in a Box for easy phone line setup. There are a number of products out there, so you may want to look around a bit to find the one that will work best for you.

Another alternative, and Fred’s personal choice, doesn’t use wires at all.
Wireless networks use radio frequency transmission to connect computers. Although somewhat slower than either phone line or A/C networks, and a bit more costly to set up, wireless networks have the advantage of allowing a notebook computer to roam freely (up to about 150 feet, anyway) from the other computers on the network.

“Being able to connect my laptop from anywhere in the house”, says Fred, “is an attractive option”. Though somewhat prone to interference from microwave ovens or other sources of radio waves, wireless networks are easy to install and generally work well.

The cost is around $120 per computer to set up. Intel’s AnyPoint Wireless Home Network 1.6 Mbps USB kit is an example of the easy-to-install wireless solutions out there. If cost is not an issue, and you want the fastest possible wireless network, look into “wireless Ethernet” (Wi-Fi), which uses the 802.11b standard and boasts data transfer speeds comparable to those offered by phone line networks.

Once you’ve made your choice and installed your network, the next order of business is to configure the networked computers to share files and peripherals with each other. If you’ve chosen to install a commercial home networking kit, its likely software is included that will take care of this step for you. If not, it’s still relatively easy to manually set up sharing.

First, you need to be sure you have the proper client/protocols installed to allow communication between computers. In Windows, go to the Network applet in Control Panel and check to make sure you have NetBEUI, along with “File and Printer sharing”, TCP/IP, and Client for MS Windows installed on each computer.

If not, you can add them from there using your Windows installation CD. Once installed, reboot and open Network Neighborhood, or use the Start menu’s Search function to look for other computers on the network. You may need to know the name of each computer you wish to find on the network. You can obtain this information by looking in the Control Panel Network applet.

The next step is to right-click on any drive, folder or peripheral you wish to share over the network, and select “Sharing…”from the menu to set permissions that will allow access from the other networked computers.

The easiest way to configure a Windows machine to share an Internet connection is to use the Internet Connection Sharing wizard found in Windows ‘98 and newer operating systems. You may need to install ICS from the “Windows setup” tab of the “Add/remove programs” applet in Control Panel.

Once installed, just run the wizard to enable sharing. Check your operating system’s Help files to get the particulars for whichever version of Windows you’re using.

So, if yours is one of the growing numbers of multi-computer households, there is an easy way to increase communication.

Whether you’re an expert or beginner, a network solution is available that will finally let all the computers in your home share and share alike.

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