dacs.doc electric

Do you have more than one PC at home or in the office? Tired of sneaker net? have a tough time transferring files bigger than a floppy disk? Like to share that nice high-speed cable modem or DSL Internet connection? Do the kids keep sneaking the new color printer up to their room? Is that what’s troubling you? Well, Bruce Preston showed us all the solution at the November meeting - you network!

Our own Random Access host, Bruce Preston, did an excellent job presenting what most people find to be a complex and confusing topic. His presentation made basic networking concepts understandable and then used that understanding to assemble a working network right there in front of our very eyes! Helping to make all this possible in the limited time available was Bruce’s able assistant, his son Scott. To say that Scott is computer literate gives the phrase an entirely new meaning and enthusiastic is another word that seems totally inadequate around Scott yet he gives the outward appearance of a normal 9-year old.

Bruce prepared PowerPoint slides to illustrate his presentation. You can download the slides from http://people.mags.net/bpreston/dacs_ppt.html. The file you download will be ‘DACS_Network_Presentation.zip’. When you open the zip-file, you will find ‘DACS Network Presentation.ppt’. If you do not have Microsoft PowerPoint 97 (or 2000), Bruce’s web page has links to download the free viewer. By the time you read this there should be a link to Bruce’s page from the DACS web site, www.dacs.org. If this will be your first experience with networking, I suggest a quick review of Bruce’s slides to help make up your shopping list.

While networking is not really an inherently difficult subject (after all, it’s just a few computers talking to each other), there are several decisions to be made when you first start down the path to home networking. First, there are several types of network interface cards (NICs) and cables. Bruce covered the differences between 10Base-2 (coax) and 10Base-T (twisted pair) cards and cabling. Both work but have advantages and liabilities. Another important point is inspecting your PC to be sure there is an available slot for the NIC and whether that slot is PCI or ISA. See Bruce’s slides for pictures to help identifying a slot. After installing an NIC in one of the computers on stage (its cover conveniently removed), Bruce proceeded to the software setup in Windows.

Networking software setup inevitably leads to a discussion of Internet protocol (IP) addresses. Bruce talked about the available ‘private network’ addresses and why you want to use these. Again, see Bruce’s slides.

As 9:00 pm came and passed, Bruce had not covered all of his material. However only a few minutes later he had all three of the computers on stage networked and sharing a single modem to access the Internet. So what did Bruce leave out? The last part of his presentation was to have covered software to allow all of the computers on the network to access the Internet over a common connection. The key to this is something called “network address translation”. The easiest solution to this is probably the Modem Sharing feature built into MS Windows 98 Second Edition and Millennium Edition. While this does not provide any firewall protection, it should be just fine for a dial-up (modem) connection.

Bruce touched on the need to protect your network from intrusion by nasty people on the Internet. This is the purpose of a firewall and is probably not really necessary if you are using a dialup connection to your Internet service provider (ISP). However, once you have a full-time high-speed connection such as a “cable modem” or DSL connection, protection becomes important. Bruce suggests a product from Sygate Technologies, Inc. See my sidebar for more suggestions.

All in all, Bruce and Scott did an excellent job presenting home networking. Perhaps the best part was watching Scott struggle to get his hands on the microphone. After the meeting, Scott ran the best - and fastest moving - raffle we’ve ever had!

Home Networking and the WAF

Home networking always involves what I call the "Wife Acceptability Factor" or WAF for short. I'll illustrate this concept with an example from my own home. Perhaps the biggest impediment to home networking is the difficulty and cost of installing cable between the computers. How you do this is where the WAF comes in. One way is to hire an electrician to install outlets for the cables in the walls. The electrician fishes the wires up from the basement and/or down from the attic and installs an outlet in your wall that looks like a telephone jack on steroids. This solution is neat (high WAF) but expensive at $150 to $300 per cable run (low WAF). I'm sure you get the idea.

In my house, I simply ran the cable down the hall from my office to the family room looping it under the rugs to get it thru the living room.

Obviously this is a low-WAF solution, but since I don't have a wife, this was not a problem. Your mileage may differ.

Now, today's technology offers some solutions that may pass the WAF test in
your house. One good one is a wireless network. These are available from
several vendors such as Intel, D-Link, 3COM, Linksys and others. Look for
products based on the 802.11b standard. The one I used to eliminate that cable down the hall comes from D-Link Systems, Inc. and works acceptably well. My experience, as well as others, suggests that the distance claims for these products may be on the optimistic side. However, the ability to completely eliminate the need for cables makes these very attractive.

Except for the wires, these work exactly like any other network and allow for
sharing of files, printers and an Internet connection. Cost for a three-computer network will be about $1000. This may seem high but compare it to the cost of the electrician to put it in perspective. It also allows me to work outside on the deck or even surf the net from the hammock - very cool!

Another solution is networking over the telephone wires already in your house. 3COM has products of this type. So far there does not appear to be an official 'standard' for this technology so one vendor's products will probably not work with those from any other vendor. There are several caveats. First, older telephone wiring will give problems due to a lack of sufficient twists (I kid you not) and these will probably not work if you have a DSL connection in the house. I do not recommend this technology but it costs less than wireless and may fit your WAF constraints.

One last suggestion is another type of network interface card. If your computer has no available slots, or you simply don't want to open it up, there is still an option. Several manufacturers make NICs that use the USB (universal serial bus) port rather than a slot to connect the computer to a network. 3COM and others offer these for about $60.

Have fun with your network!