Local Area Networks for Home and Small Office
A Typical Home Network
There are a number of components and their role needs to be explained to the new home network enthusiast.
- Internet Provider - Your Internet provider may use DSL or Cable as the method of delivery for your Internet service. This service can also be provided by a wireless service provider. See the wireless page on this site for details on wireless networking from a WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider).
- Netgear - Are we partial to Netgear? This is just an example of one of the broadband routers available for home networks and small business networks as well. This device is needed to connect the home network to the Internet Service Provider.
- Home Network LAN - The Local Area Network is usually provided in the broadband router as it will also incorporate a switch or hub with 4 or 5 ports. These ports are where you connect the other devices on the home network. The term for LAN actually defines a group of devices connected to a network in a local setting (like a small group of rooms or possibly one or two offices in a geographically small are).
- PC#1 - In most households, this PC was there when the network was not present in the home. This PC will have the most disk space, the most resources in the form of software and the most data.
- PC#2 - This PC may have also been present before the network, but it was usually an add-on PC to take some of the contention for use off of the first PC. This is also a storage area for some software and probably the extra data needed for the functions that this PC provides.
- Shared Printer - This printer was probably there before the home network as well. The printer was used by PC #1 exclusively until the network was installed. This printer can be connected directly to the network providing that the printer supports that type of connection. There are a number of ways to connect this printer and these will be covered in subsequent discussions.
- Wireless laptop - This is most likely an employer -supplied device that ,mom or dad uses from the office. This device will also have alot of explanation in future discussions.
These basic devices form the beginnings of our home network project. What are some of the uses we have opened up with the addition of the Internet availability as well as the resources of all the PCs on the network. Let's look at just a few of the resources available to users on the home network.
- The World Wide Web (WWW, HTML or 'The Web') - This enormous collection of information (like this page) is available to all of the computers on the network. This information can be accessed from every PC on the network. Each PC can do its own independent access and there is no contention of the users of each machne. The Internet contains all kinds of information. We will discuss some of this information in subsequent additions to this discussion.
- File sharing - The files on one machine can be shared with the other machines on the network. The way this is done and the application and issues raised by this capability will be discussed.
- Print sharing - While printers have come down in price. The sharing of printer resources can save time and money by allowing all users on the network to print documents to one shared resource. There are a number of applications here and considerations as well. We will discuss these as we go forward.
- Future discussions will also cover - media sharing, backup of information, remote control of PCs and appliances and security applications.
Check back here in the next couple of weeks for updates