LAN Information for September 2005
Local Area Networks Designed by the average user
The local area network's designed on this page were done by home network pro staff. The drawings are original work. Feel free to copy this design and use for making your home network very robust. This network features several operating systems, has many capbilities and is relatively secure. All the components will be discussed. Do you have a design you would like to feature on this page? Let us know about it and write to us at webmaster@homenetworkpro.com.
The basic design of this network will use TWO broadband providers. Why two broadband providers? Well here there are a number of reasons:
- The user is a home office worker for a large company that cannot afford to be offline
- Both DSL and Cable modem service are available for use.
- The user has an internal firewall to protect the DSL and Cablemodem networks from each other.
- It is nice to have the ability to segregate traffic to different users of the network.
- The redundancy factor and load balancing features can be utilized and tested between different products.
This week we will show you the overall design and then expound on each area every week this month. Of course if you are reading this after September 2005, you can read it all below.
The services provided by this network include:
- File and print sharing with Linux, Windows 2000 and Windows XP
- Firewall support for incoming/outgoing traffic
- URL filtering, TCP filters and timed access for students in the houehold.
- Internet enabled television for both cable TV and Internet TV broadcasts
- Central music file sharing service using Linux/Wintel
- Wireless access to the Internet from anywhere in the house and the grounds around the home
- Wireless access is WEP encrypted and MAC filtered for pretty good security
- Comcast and SBC are separated by the firewall to prvent back door traffic into either network.
- The whole system is multi-homed to prevent outages to the working environment.
The system is comprised of off-the-shelf components and is easily built by the average home network enthusiast. To build this network you need to have a knowledge in some basic networking and basic operating system fundamentals. As this article continues, we will continue to discuss these attributes, services and capabilities.