Many home computer networks consist of nothing more than a single computer with a connection to the Internet. But what happens when you want to add more computers to your network? By using the right equipment to connect your computers, you open up a world of fun and useful things you can do. So where do you start? This computer network buying guide will help you figure out how to buy computer networking equipment that will help you set up the right network for your home.
When you want to set up your own computer network, you'll need at least a casual acquaintance with two topics: IP addressing and Ethernet. Knowing a bit about these can help you uncover some real flexibility with how you set up your home network.
Whenever your computer is connected to the Internet, your computer is identified by an IP address. IP, which stands for Internet Protocol, is a set of standards that all of the computers and other devices on the Internet use to make sure that they are all able to communicate properly. An IP address is a series of four numbers, each between zero and 255, with a period separating each of those numbers, such as 192.168.1.1. As long as your computer is connected to the Internet, the other computers on the Internet locate you by this address. Also, each time your computer transmits over the Internet, it also uses another number called a port number, which is between zero and about 65,000; the combination of IP address and port number is used to specify a precise action on an exact computer.
At any given time, an IP address can only point to a single device; however, as you'll see in a moment, a single IP address can represent a large amount of computers on your home network, with the right piece of equipment.
Ethernet is a set of standards for the physical connections between computers and other devices on the same network. If you've ever seen a connection that looked a lot like a phone jack but a bit larger, chances are that you were looking at an Ethernet interface. Many computers nowadays come with one or more Ethernet interfaces built-in, and there are network interface cards (NICs) you can install in your computer; other networking devices will have one or more Ethernet interfaces to let you connect computers to them; this means that you just need an Ethernet cable to connect one Ethernet interface to another.
Once you've moved beyond dial-up Internet access to the world of broadband Internet connections, you quickly learn that you need a way for all the computers in your house to share that Internet connection. After all, one of the strengths of an always-on Internet connection is that multiple computers can use it at the same time. When you have a broadband Internet connection, your Internet service provider (ISP) will give you a device such as a cable modem or a DSL modem to connect to. Some ISPs will let each of the computers on your network use a different IP address, but this still requires that each computer have a way to physically connect to the cable modem. (Generally speaking, if you wanted multiple cable modems or multiple DSL modems, you'd have to pay for each as a completely separate Internet connection.)
A simple way to connect multiple computers to your cable modem or DSL modem is with a hub; a hub is a small box that you plug each of your computers into, and then you plug the hub into your modem. Hubs are generally inexpensive, but they are also not very sophisticated; if you try to connect more than a few devices into a hub, you'll quickly start to notice all of your network activity slowing down. To avoid this, you can use a switch; a switch is similar to a hub, but with a bit more intelligence that lets you connect more computers without everyone's network connection slowing down.
If you want to avoid paying for multiple IP addresses, a device called a router can give you an excellent way to have multiple computers connected to the Internet using the same IP address; the router will essentially represent all of your computers to the rest of the Internet, so that the router is the only device with an IP address the Internet knows about. The router then uses different port numbers to keep the network traffic from each of your computers separate. Because there's a large range of port numbers and any one computer only uses a handful of ports at any one time, this lets the router effectively "hide" many computers behind the same IP address by cleverly rearranging port numbers of the traffic that passes through it.
While routers vary significantly in cost and capabilities, a simple broadband router will normally be a very inexpensive and will give you all the interfaces you need to connect a few computers at home (or to another hub or switch).
Laptops and hand-held devices are more suited to wireless connections than wired connections. Wireless network technology is also sometimes referred to as 802.11, which is the specification number as it's defined by an organization called the IEEE. There have been a handful of 802.11 wireless specifications over the years, such as 802.11b and 802.11g. Newer specifications are backwards compatible with the older ones, but your network will generally be fastest if all of your equipment supports the newest standard. A device called a wireless access point acts as a receiver for all of your wireless devices; nowadays, it's extremely common for broadband routers to include a wireless access point.
Another option for networks that sprawl throughout your home is Powerline networking; this technology lets you use the electrical wiring in your home as wiring for your network. This is a great option for connecting different floors of your house, where running Ethernet cables can be difficult and where wireless networks can be rendered useless by the materials in your house that hinder wireless signals.
What if your home network isn't just a small handful of computers? What if it's a dozen or more computers? You can still connect all of these computers together. Hubs and switches often have large numbers of Ethernet interfaces. Again, however, hubs will start to perform poorly when you have more than a few computers trying to communicate at the same time, so switches are the preferred alternative. In fact, you can daisy-chain multiple switches together to let you network large amounts of computer together. This approach is great for networked gaming, rendering farms and other tasks involving large numbers of computers working together.
As soon as your computer connects to the Internet, there's always the concern of other people trying to compromise your computer, such as for identify theft or other similar purposes. One fact that's often overlooked is that your computer's operating system is often the biggest security weakness in your network, so be sure to keep your operating system up to date. There are network devices called firewalls that can help protect your entire network by preventing outsiders from entering your home network uninvited, while still letting you visit Websites, use your email, play online games and do all the other tasks you normally do. The term "firewall" refers to any device or piece of software performing this kind of security, and it may come in the form of a stand-alone device, a piece of software that you run on each of your computers or simply something another device does for you.
Broadband routers that let you share your Internet connection nearly always do this via a process called Network Address Translation (NAT), which has the added benefit of acting as a firewall. In the process of acting as an intermediary between your computers and the Internet, NAT's default behavior is to ignore all outside traffic that your computers didn't request. This means that outsiders simply aren't able to enter your home network and try to compromise your computers. (People will often use the phrase "NAT firewall" when talking about this behavior.)
How do I choose between wired and wireless networking?
Some people will try to advocate wireless networking over wired networking and vice versa. However, if you recognize that there are strengths and weaknesses to each, then you can make the best decision for your particular network.
Wireless networking's greatest strength is the flexibility and portability of wireless devices. Some devices, such as hand-held video game consoles, make it impractical to require an Ethernet connection to your network. Likewise, laptops are lightweight enough to be moved around freely, so requiring you to stay put in order to use the network would undermine one of the laptop's strengths. Of course, wireless networking is not without weakness. One of the greatest weaknesses is that your signal is essentially broadcast to anyone nearby that wants to listen for it. Wireless networking standards go to great lengths to make wireless connections secure (via encryption methods), and generally anything but the most sensitive data is sufficiently protected to safely travel over a wireless network. Another weakness of wireless networking is that everyone using a wireless network in the same area is essentially using the same medium to communicate, which starts to slow things down as soon as multiple people are trying to communicate at the same time. Wireless networks can have different devices use different channels (meaning a different range of frequencies), but you simply can't beat having a separate Ethernet line for each computer, if you want speed.
Wired networking's greatest weakness is, simply put, that you have a wire connecting your computer to the network. Sure, you can move the wire around, but you'll never enjoy the same freedom as with wireless networks. However, wired networks are generally superior in terms of speed and security. (After all, it's much more difficult to infiltrate an Ethernet line than to simply listen for wireless broadcasts.)
Be sure you weigh the strengths and weaknesses of wired and wireless networking before you choose one for your network.
What is the difference between a hub and a switch?
To appreciate this difference, it helps to know that each network interface card (NIC) has a unique identifier called a MAC address. (MAC is an acronym for Media Access Control, if you're curious). Literally, no two NICs in the world should have the same MAC address. When data is traveling over an Ethernet network, the Ethernet devices use this MAC address to find the exact device that it wants to talk to.
Hubs pay no attention to MAC addresses. If you have, for example, eight computers plugged into a hub and one of those computers sends data meant for one of those other computers, then the hub will simply forward that data to all of the other seven computers. This might not sound so bad, until you consider that computers can each send out enormous amounts of data every second, and if the hub is forwarding large amounts of unnecessary data to everyone, the network can become congested in a hurry.
Switches, on the other hand, pay attention to the MAC addresses in every communication that they pass along. Switches are constantly watching the MAC addresses of everything that passes through their interfaces and making a note of which Ethernet interface it should use to reach each MAC address. That way, when one computer on the network tries to talk to another computer, the switch will only forward that traffic out of the one interface it knows can take it to the destination computer's MAC address. The other computers on the network are left undisturbed, and more importantly, their lines of communication are left clear.
Have some fun with a wide variety of software
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Trick out your home computer
If you're a performance enthusiast or you're just running out of hard drive space, you'll want to check out our selection of upgrades you can install in your computer, including computer accessories and aftermarket computer components. Upgrade your video card to get a better frame rate when you're gaming or add a hard drive to hold a bunch more music. The possibilities are almost endless.
