How To Set Up A Home Network

Let me say that again, to set up a home network with just two computers, all you need is a cable and that cable is what is referred to as a cross over cable.

It’s a special cable where you have a network only between two computers or in a couple of other special situations where you might need a crossover cable.

Once you have connected the computers with the crossover wire you have set up a home network and actually have that first level of connectivity. In some cases you may be able to start home networking from this point forward with no other requirements.

But in many cases you need to add manually that second level of connection, that is, you need a way to uniquely identify each computer on the network. And in that case you would have to do that on each individual computer and we discuss that topic in the section that deals with setting up your client computers.

What if you want to set up a home network using more than two computers…

It gets a little more complicated when you have three computers or more that you want to wire together.

But hey, that is why I am here!

See the problem with setting up three or more computers is that there's no way for me to create a wire that simply connects to all the computers. So in order to set up a home network, I need to bring in some help and that is where the next device comes in.

A hub, this device will take a wire from the three computers and what it does is it handles the communication between the three computers on your home network. The simplest kind of device is something called a hub. And really all a hub does is help you set up a home network by providing a way to plug three wires together.

Hub

In the case of a hub, if computer number one were to communicate on the network, the hub would receive that information and then rebroadcast it out to the other two computers which ever computer was suppose to receive the message from computer number one, it would hear it, and would then return an answer broadcast that would be received by the hub and the hub would rebroadcast out back to all the computers on the network. This is usually for the most basic needs but I recommend going to a higher level.

The next step up from a hub is something called a switch. There's no way to tell externally which is which, except for the fact that one says hub and one says switch. The difference between a switch and a hub is that when one computer speaks, like for example computer one, it’s message will be sent to some other destination computer, and that computer only or maybe it was destined for multiple computers. Using our phone analogy again, the switch sort of acts like an operator. It connects the correct machine with the other correct machines. If your network is fairly small you may not need this, but if your network is large or you want to plan ahead, it's definitely handy because it helps make network traffic flow work more efficiently.

Switch

Truth be told, most the device you might buy are already switches, just be careful and check it’s features. Sometimes when you get a discount deal online, one of the reasons it was such a great deal is because someone found out they had a hub and not a switch. If you can, spend the extra bucks, get a switch because it is not that much more expensive anyway.

Still something missing…

We still have a situation where these computers need a way to identify each other over the network and you may have to set that manually.

Or…

If you want to avoid that, you can take one more step up and get something called a router. And once again, if the truth be told, most the devices that you buy for a small office or home network are on this third and most sophisticated level, called a computer router.

The addition of a router means that once each computer is plug in, it is actually the router that will take care of telling the computer what it’s unique identifier is, that is, what It's phone number is if you will, in the home network.

Network Router

If you are going to set up a home network, I recommend that you go all the way to the router level, again prices are so comparatively cheap that it's well worth your trouble to just take this extra step.

Now when you plug each device into the router, for the most part, all you so is power them up, set up sharing on the different computers and they are good to go.

The other advantage of a router is that if you want to share another resource, particularly an extra resource such as the Internet, the router has additional features in that it can create two separate networks.

Network Router

The way it does this is it takes an intermediary (go-between) device such as at cable modem or DSL modem, which ever you happen to have. You might have one right now and it's plugged directly into your computer through an Ethernet cable. Those cables (the one connection to your modem) would now be plugged into the back of the router. Also all other computers in your home network would be plugged into the router.

Network Router

What the router does it that it splits the network now, and it now has two sides, it has a LAN or local area network (your home network), and a WAN or a wide area network (the internet network). In fact several routers show the letter WAN on right the back of them for the place that you plug in the DSL or cable modem.

Network Router

The important idea here is that similar to a switch, the router is going to control the traffic on the network. So if computer one were to communicate with the Internet, the router would hear that request from computer on, it would then pass it to the DSL or cable modem, out to the Internet, wait for the reply, get it back from the modem and pass it back to computer one. If computer two wanted to connect to the Internet, it would do the same thing, but now if computer two wanted to connect to say computer one, the router understands that, that message is not destined for the Internet and will not pass it to the cable modem and to the other computers in the world to hear, but it will, get this, “route” it to just the computers on the network that it was intended for.

Wow!