The way that it used to be, is people generally had one computer in their home. Internet access was based on dial-up modems which were connected directly with a serial cable on the home computer. No Local Area Network was needed. With the advancement of technology and the wide spread adoption of high speed internet connectivity at homes, necessitates that home appliances should be networked to facilitate online access and to also communicate and share information between them.
What I mean when I say home appliances is home computers, next generation game consoles, printers, scanners, network attached storage, etc. All of these “Appliances” need to share information amongst themselves over a network, but also need to have high-speed access to the Internet. To achieve that, you will need to set-up a home network. With a home based network you are technically building a local area network, which can be wired or wireless, that networked devices communicate between inside the home, and also share the same internet connection.
The base of the home network is your broadband router. This is usually a device that lets you setup a wired or a wireless network. You can use Ethernet cables if you’re making a wired network, or use Wi-Fi for wireless. This integrated router provides also the Internet access connectivity.
Once you have your home network setup, you can connect your computers, laptops, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, servers, network storage boxes, etc. After you successfully connect all your devices to the router, you can share and distribute your files over the network, have LAN parties on game consoles, play online video games, and share pictures between computer.
By: Alex D Smith
Posts Tagged ‘Home Network Setup’
How to Setup a Home Network – Choosing Your Network Equipment
February 4th, 2010
If you want to build a personal network, planning ahead can save both money and time especially if you ever know you will grow your local area network in the distant future.
The whole point of coming up with a plan is to realize what you actually need to put in your network, after all there are many more things available than just having computers that connect to the internet.
This includes WiFi, cables, or even both
Although you might be only using wired connections, will you be able to use WiFi in the future?
Almost everyone at some point, and the difference in prices between a wired router and wireless router is small, and just about every wireless router still have a wired ethernet hub built into them meaning we can still connect both wired and wireless devices.
The whole point most people want a home network setup is to share an internet connection, in this case it’s imperative the security and the router has the latest firmware, this includes Wireless Security, Router Security & each computer must have a firewall, anti-spyware and a firewall.
Long gone are the days of having to share your hard drive or have a special computer, network attached hard drives are easy to setup and they typically have space from 500gb to 2tb. Some even have a wireless option.
The speed of a network can be a major factor if you send big files, truth be told a cabled network will always be faster than wireless, as a rule of thumb use cabled where possible and wifi where you have to, i.e laptops.
One of the big mistakes made when many of us are setting up a home network in the house is thinking about future expansions to the network, spending a little less today will only mean you spend more down the road, work within your budget but be realistic, setup the network that suits your needs and and budget.
By: Alex D Smith
