I’ve been preaching home networking so long this topic seems stale as week old bread. The kicker is that the proliferation of high speed internet is really pushing it along, plus the cheap and fast computers available. If I can pick up a used Pentium II machine for $300 and hook it up for the wife or kids, that leaves my machine safe. Once you decide on the home network route, it’s easy to add more at each juncture. An aside; I’m only dealing with regular networking wiring via CAT5 cable; there are HPNA and wireless solutions available, but Ethernet cable is the fastest and moderately priced solution available. As well, I’m painting with a wide brush and just touching on a lot of topics briefly; look at this as an overview and a source of ideas.
Here’s the most typical scenario: you’ve upgraded your home PC and have moved the old one to the kid’s room. Now both of you want to have internet access, but who wants to pay for two connections? Here’s where you can set up Internet Connection Sharing ( ICS ) with Windows 98, Me or 2000 and have your high speed or dial up internet connection shared between the two PC’s. All you need are two network interface cards ( NICs ) and a network crossover cable long enough to go between the two. NICs are around $20 each and the cable is about the same. No matter what network you decide on every computer will need a NIC. As long as the PC’s are in relatively close proximity there’s a minimum of drilling involved. Installation and setup is not too painful; the ICS setup is straight forward, and the NICs are plug and play.
To move the above scenario a little further, you want to set up a home router / gateway to share your internet connection. This way the main machine is free from having to share the internet connection, and you can get some proper network wiring in place. Best to get a home router with a hub built in; good models are available from Linksys and D-Link for around $150. A quick background on network wiring; imagine a star with the hub in the middle and PCs at each pint. Each PC connects to the other through the hub or switch, thus calling it star topology. If you can spend the extra buy a switch instead of a hub; it eliminates some problems like data loss and packet collision. The home router gets connected to your high speed internet, then each PC connects to the router via a CAT5 Ethernet cable.
Next scenario: you have three or more PCs in the house and need to get everything connected. This fits my house, which I’ll be using as an example. Two ways to approach this: use a home router and cabling, or set up a PC as a home server and connect to it via a hub or switch. The difference with these two options are the extra cables; at this point you’re probably talking about connecting different floors and getting everything to work. The best solution is to get CAT5 cable run through the house and bring it together somewhere like the basement or a closet. I paid an electrician to run the cables and connected them myself; you can go lots of ways to meet the final goal.
If you’re running the cabling or connecting it yourself, you’ll need some supplies. I’ve seen CAT5 cable at Home Depot, where you can buy it by the piece or box. Along with that you’ll need jacks, ends or a patch panel, and a punch tool or crimp tool. Here’s how that works; Ethernet cable is made of eight wires, which are punched onto a jack or into an RJ45 connector. For a few lines I’d get punch the wire into jacks in the room and crimp them with connectors, then plug into your hub or switch. For more than three or four connections I’d use a patch panel, which is just a panel you can mount on the wall that you connect the wires to in the back and gives and RJ45 jack in the front. Then you plug a cable from the patch panel to your hub or switch. Let’s talk cost, giving estimates; punch tool $30, crimp tool $50, RJ45 connector $0.50, wall jack $10, patch panel $80, 400’ CAT5e box $250. These can vary by location, but serve to flesh out the picture. Check this out for more information on wiring and cable connecting.
The last scenario is what I have set up; a home network with six PCs connecting to a home server. All my wiring runs to the furnace room where the cable, telephone and hydro come into the house. Eight CAT5 wires were run throughout the house and connect to a patch panel. Beside the patch panel I mounted an eight port switch and connected everything together. In my office runs my home server, a Pentium II 350MHz with 512MB of RAM, two 60 GB drives in a RAID 1 configuration and my cable internet connection. Being a reviewer I got a copy of Windows 2000 Server and set it up to share files, printing and internet. For a free software home server check out E-Smith and their excellent Linux product; free to download and use. The nice thing about both these setups is they can be remotely managed; set up the computer, unplug the monitor and stick it in the closet with the wiring.
As you can see we’ve gone from a few cards and a wire to pulling cable throughout the house and spending way too much time and money. Remember that if the ground work is laid properly you can just expand your network as the need arises. My next step is a wireless connection to use my laptop on the back deck; stop the insanity!
April 27th, 2001
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