Have you got more than one computer at home? Do you need to regularly share files between these machines? Do you have one or more printers that you want to access from all of your computers?
If the answer to some or all of these questions is yes, you may want to think about setting up your own network.
I recently set up one for very little cost so I could share both files and printers between machines. It's not too hard to do as I'll explain...
I have a Windows 95B setup at home. Win 95 and later (Win 98 Win 2000 etc) has built in features for networking. If you are trying to do this with other operating systems then you will have to seek further info on what to do about configuring your machines. However, all of the information on running wiring and setting up a hub will be the same no matter what machines and operating systems you use.
So what's involved? Well it's actually very easy to do! The cost will vary depending on the option you chose, but I basically did mine with used equipment, cabling and network cards to keep the costs down. At present, I have three machines networked. I also have printers connected to two of these and I can access any printer from any machine on the network.
What I will describe is a set up that involved running wires around my home. This article doesn't cover the use of wireless (radio) networking which is also becoming fairly popular. It's major advantage is that there is no wiring to install - but it's a fair bit more expensive and substantially less secure. It also doesn't run anywhere near as fast as a hard-wired ethernet network. Regarding the security issue, unless you set it up correctly, anyone within range who has a laptop and a standard radio network interface card can access your computers and network.
First, let's start with a list of the things you will need:
1. An ethernet network card for each computer you need to network (the computers you want to network should each have a spare PCI (or ISA) expansion slot to take the card).
2. An ethernet 'hub' which is the device used to connect one machine to another.
3. Suitable cables to run through your home.
4. Wall sockets and cables to run from these sockets to each computer.
The above list doesn't, however, apply if you only want to network two machines. In that case, all you'll need is a network card for each machine and a special "crossover" cable to connect them.
Now for the detail about setting up your ethernet network. By the way, ethernet is the name of the network transmission protocol and it happens to be the most widely deployed network technology in the world.
You will need Ethernet cards which can be had for as little as A$20 each new or even less second hand. They come in two common speeds: 10 megabit and 100 megabit. For most home network applications, a 10 megabit card is perfectly adequate (and significantly cheaper than the faster 100 megabit card).
There are a few other things you need to decide. The cards are available for either ISA slots or PCI slots in your computer. Which you use will depend on what slots you have spare on your machine. I'd recommend you stick with PCI cards as they are more common and you will likely have more of these slots free. Also, ISA slots are approaching obsolescence. In fact, if you want to run 100 megabit cards, you have no choice as the throughput of the ISA slots in your computer isn't fast enough to support a 100 megabit card.
A PCI network card. This one has both a coaxial and an RJ45 connector.
How do you tell the difference between a PCI slot and an ISA slot? Computers built in the last 4 or 5 years will mostly have PCI slots. These are smaller and have more closely spaced connection pins than the older ISA slots. Some newer machines may not even have any ISA slots at all. You will need to look at your computer manual or open your machine and take a look.
The other variation you will find on the network card is the type of connection socket for the external cable to your network. There are two main types here. One is a coaxial connector and is easily identified as a cylindrical metal thing sticking out of the back plate of the card. It is about 1 cm in diameter and will stick out one or two centimetres. I don't recommend these and many people consider them obsolete now. Instead, you should go for cards with RJ45 sockets. These are small socket that have 8 connection pins. One of these sockets is illustrated in Figure 1. These are by far the most common now. You may find that your network cards come with both a coaxial and an RJ45 connector (the photo of the network card in this article has both types of connectors). These are fine also as you can simply ignore the coaxial connector.
One good reason for using the RJ45-type cards is that's the type of cabling I'll be describing below. If you want to use a coaxial cable network, you'll have to do your own research! Anyway, I think the coaxial cables look uglier.
The hub is a little box of electronics that does the actual job of connecting the different computers on your network. It will have a row of RJ45 sockets on the front. You plug the other end of the cable that comes from your computer's network card into this socket. Each computer has to be plugged into its own socket on the hub.
Hubs come is a variety of types and sizes. If you want to run a 100 megabit network (as I've said, I think this is overkill) then you must buy a 100 megabit hub. Sometimes these will be labeled as 10/100 hubs. The "10/100" title simply means that it will work at both 10 megabits and 100 megabits. Such hubs autosense the type of connection and switch to the correct speed.
I recommend you buy a 10 megabit hub. These can be purchased for as little as A$50 new. However, if you want one with more than 5 or 6 ports (port = RJ 45 socket) then you will be paying more. I actually have a flashy 16 port hub that I picked up in perfect working order at one of the computer auctions for less than $30 - a real bargain as it would have cost hundreds new! Make sure you select a hub with enough ports to connect each computer you want to network. It's always a good idea to allow for a couple of extra if possible so that you can expand in the future if needed.
My 16 port Synoptics hub. This one is a standard 10 megabit/ second hub.
A more expensive option is to buy a switch rather than a hub. Again, these come in 10 and 100 megabit versions. However, they are considerably more expensive and not necessary for a home installation as the performance improvement that they give will be hard or impossible to observe on a small network. The difference between a switch and a hub is that each port on the switch is isolated from all the other ports. The switch is smart enough to know which computer is connected to which port. When one computer needs to send data to another, the switch will temporarily establish a private connection only between those two computers. All of the other computers on the network will not see this data. As a result, the other computers on the network can carry on their own private 'conversation' with one another without having to wait for the first two to stop chatting away.
A hub, on the other hand, is a shared access device. If one computer sends data to another, every other computer on the network will see the data and have to wait until the transmitting computer is finished before it can use the network. While this might sound inefficient, it actually works very well. Many business networks still rely on hubs rather than switches for their network connections (although this is changing as the price of switches falls).
Where should you locate your hub? Place it somewhere centrally in your home and somewhere that you have easy access to. It's quite common to simply put it on top of one of your computers you will be networking and run the wiring out to the rest of the house from this point. You will need a powerpoint near the hub to run it from. The smaller hubs usually just run from a small wall transformer. Larger hubs will have their own inbuilt power supply.
Luckily, you will only need one cable type to do all of your network. The cable is a type of computer data cable called Category 5 UTP. The UTP stands for Unshielded Twisted Pair. A lot of people call it Cat 5 UTP for short, or just Cat 5. There are eight separate wires in the cable arranged as four pairs. Each pair is twisted together to reduce stray electrical signals being picked up by the wires.
The four pairs of wires are colour-coded according to a set standard:
Category 5 UTP cable, showing the four twisted wire pairs.
The most common type of cable consists of wires each of which is made up from a single, solid strand of copper. I recommend you get this type. Don't buy cable in which each wire is made up of multiple small strands of copper. I don't recommend the latter because the sockets and plugs you will be fitting to the ends of these wires are mostly designed for the single strand type of wire.
The worst bit about installing your network in is running the cable through your house. I was lucky in having good access behind walls and under floors where I wanted to run my cables. You may not be so lucky. You should think out and plan this part carefully.
One rule when you are cabling is to avoid running the cable on top of or right next to power cables. You will likely generate a lot of 'noise' on your cable that can lead to errors or stop it functioning altogether. However, don't worry if you have to cross a power cable here and there - just avoid long runs where both power cables and your network cable are running on top of each other.
All of the cables will radiate out from the point where the hub is located. You may need quite a bit of cable depending on how many computers you are networking, where everything is located and where you need to run the wires. Cat 5 costs around A90 cents a metre if you buy short lengths. You can get a significant discount if you buy a 100 metre roll (works out to less than A70 cents per metre). It may be possible to get it for even less if you shop around. I actually used second hand cable that was being ripped out of a building during a refit. I got it for practically nothing. Obviously there is a risk of getting breaks or damage with such cable but I had no problems whatsoever with mine.
There is a limit to the maximum length of cable between the hub and the computer. However you are unlikely to run into this limit which is 100 metres.
OK, you have now run cables all over the place and the ends of them are now sticking out of holes in the wall. What do you do with them now? You will need to fit an RJ45 socket to the end of each wire. For neatness, this socket can be fitted to a wall plate that can be screwed into your wall just like a power point or light switch. In Australia, places like Jaycar Electronics sells suitable sockets and wall plates (along with cable and other things you might need). A socket and wall plate will cost you about A$10 each all up - quite pricey really considering you can buy a complete network card for only A$20.
When you buy your sockets, make sure you get the so-called "keystone" type. Don't buy solder sockets as you'll need a soldering iron and some very fiddly soldering work to connect them. The keystone sockets have special slots at the back into which you simply push each wire with a special tool. A cheap insertion tool is available for only a few dollars and you'll be able to use it for all your sockets.
The wires have to be connected up in to the correct pins of the socket. You'll actually find markings on the socket and the packaging it is in to tell you the correct coloured wire to push into each slot. However, there are two wiring standards and both are marked on the socket. It doesn't matter which one you use as long as you do it the same way at each end of your cable. To avoid confusion, I'll only give you one of the standards here.
A photo of a keystone jack, standard RJ45 plug, pushdown tool and wall plate.
Here is the EIA/TIA-568B wiring scheme:
| PIN NUMBER | WIRE COLOUR |
| 1 | orange white |
| 2 | orange |
| 3 | green white |
| 4 | blue |
| 5 | blue white |
| 6 | green |
| 7 | brown white |
| 8 | brown |
Your socket should be marked with pin numbers. Your plugs won't be though. To find pin 1 on your RJ45 plug, hold the plug so it is pointing away from you - as though you are ready to insert it in a socket. With the gold-plated connection pins pointing up, pin 1 is the left-most pin and pin 8 is the right-most.
Note that even though you should connect up all the wires, Ethernet only uses four of the eight (pins 1, 2, 3 and 6).
Actually, when you come to fitting sockets to the ends of your cables, you may be able to make some shortcuts to cut down the number of sockets you need. Because my hub is located inside a cupboard and the wiring comes out of the wall inside that cupboard, I decided not to bother with wall sockets to terminate the cables there. I simply ran the cables neatly out of a hole in the wall and crimped RJ45 plugs straight onto the end of each. If you want to take this shortcut though, you'll have to beg, borrow or buy a crimping tool for RJ45 plugs. The advantage is that you can then make up your own patch leads. See the next section for more details on this.
As I mentioned earlier on, if you only have two computers to connect, you can do this with a single cable. You don't need a hub. A special "crossover" cable is needed to make it work. If the computers you want to connect are in separate rooms, I'd recommend you wire up the wall sockets as above, connect one computer to its wall socket with a normal patch cable and make up a crossover cable to connect the other computer to its wall socket.
A crossover cable has two RJ 45 plugs at each end, one of which is wired according the table above. The other end is, however, wired according to the following table:
| PIN NUMBER (crossover cable) | WIRE COLOUR |
| 1 | green white |
| 2 | green |
| 3 | orange white |
| 4 | blue |
| 5 | blue white |
| 6 | orange |
| 7 | brown white |
| 8 | brown |
If you have done the house wiring correctly, you will have a number of separate wires running through your house, radiating out from the point where your hub is located. Each end of each wire will have an RJ 45 socket (sometimes called a 'jack') connected to it. You now need to run cables from these sockets to your hub (at the hub end) or to each computer's network card (at the computer end).
These cables are called patch cables and will have an RJ45 plug (not socket) at each end.
An RJ-45 plug crimped onto the end of a piece of Cat 5 cable.
A wall jack, mounted on a wall plate, with an RJ-45 patch lead from a computer inserted.
They are simply made from an appropriate length of Cat 5 UTP cable. Patch cables can be bought ready made in various lengths to suit your requirements. You can also make up your own cables to the precise lengths you need if you have a crimping tool for RJ 45 plugs. These look like a fancy pair of pliers with a socket on one end to hold the RJ 45 plug. The crimpers range in price from $30 or so to more than A$100 and are fairly easy to use. If you don't want to bother with making up your own cables, simply buy the ready-made ones. However, if you need a lot of cables, it will be quite a bit cheaper to crimp your own. Also, if you want to make up crossover cables or do other fancy things, a crimping tool will be essential.
An RJ-45 crimping tool.
The sockets at each end of the cable will be wired up according to the EIA/TIA 568B standard (above).
The description below is specific to Windows 95 computers. I gather the process is similar for later versions of Windows as well, but I don't know for sure. You'll have to do you own investigations.
The first thing you have to do is install the drivers for the network card in each computer (assuming you have already installed the cards). Normally, the network card will come with a disc containing the necessary drivers. These are installed in the same way as all other new hardware drivers in Windows 95. Go to the Start menu and select Settings: Control Panel: Add New Hardware. Follow the prompts from here. I recommend using the auto detection process to find the network card (assuming it is plug and play compatible).
You may not even need to manually start the hardware installation wizard because when you boot your machine after installing the card, it should automatically detect the new hardware and prompt you for a driver disc. Automatic detection will occur if you have a plug-and-play network card (most of them are).
Windows 95 includes drivers for a number of older network cards, so it's possible you won't actually need a driver disc if there is already one provided by Windows. If you do have a driver disc though, use it.
Next, you will need to tell Windows what networking protocols you plan to use. Generally, you will want NetBEUI. To do this, go to "Settings" on the start menu, open Control Panel and double click the "Network" icon. Near the top of the Window that opens will be a list of items, one of which should be your newly installed network card. Click on this once to highlight it then select "Properties". Go to the "Bindings" tab. Check the box that says "NetBEUI -> [name of your network card]". Click OK. Once you get back to the main "Network" window, about half way down there is a list box called "Primary Network Logon". Select "Windows Logon" from the list.
While you still have the "Network" window open, go to the "Identification" tab. Fill in the names you would like to use for your Computer Name, Workgroup and Computer Description. The only trick here is to use the same "Workgroup" name for all of the computers you are going to network. If you don't, you'll have problems. There, I warned you.
Before you can share any files, folders or printers, you will need to install the Windows sharing utilities (if you haven't already). To do this, go back to the "Configuration" tab in the "Network" window. Click on the "File and Print Sharing" button and tick the boxes you want. At this stage, you will be asked to insert your Windows CD so the necessary files can be loaded.
Next, open Explorer and right click on a drive or folder you want to share across the network. Go to "Properties" then click on the "Sharing" tab and select the "Shared As" option. Fill in the details you want here and select the desired options. Do this for every shared drive or folder and every computer on your network.
Windows has a lot of ways you can share data and printers. Which you chose is a personal matter. The options include password control at the user level, the drive level, the folder level or the printer level. (You can't set access control on individual files in Windows 95 but I believe you can in later versions of Windows). Alternatively, you can network without any password controls. Once sharing is set up, you will be able to see the drives and folders on that machine from others on your network. To see them, double click the Network Neighbourhood icon.
If you frequently access drives or folders on the other computers on your network, you can "map" them to a logical drive letter on your machine either on the fly or every time your machine boots up. To do this, go to Network Neighbourhood and click on a folder or drive on another computer that you want to map (your hub will need to be on and so will the other computer). Right click on the drive or folder and select the "Map network drive" option. Fill in the details you want. Now open Explorer or My Computer. You will see a new drive letter on the list that represents the drive or folder that you have just mapped.
Problem solving is usually best done in a methodical way. There are lots of tricks you can try like swapping patch cables and network cards, and by carefully comparing software configurations on different machines if part of your network don't seem to be working. But before attempting any of this, first of all, make sure you do all of the following first:
1. Ensure the computers you want to network are switched on and running Windows 95 (or whatever operating system you are using)
2. Ensure they each have their network cards installed and the network cards are working. To do a quick check on the cards, go to the "Settings" item on the Start menu and select "Control Panel". Double click the "System" icon, go to the "Device Manager" tab and expand the "Network adapters" icon. View the Properties for your network card and look for any error messages or comments that it isn't working properly.
3. Ensure each computer's network card is connected to the wall socket you have installed for it and that the line from the wall socket is plugged into a spare jack on your hub.
4. Ensure the hub is turned on - there are usually indicator lights on the front.
There will be two common areas of problems: faulty cabling and faulty network configuration on your computers. Clearly, care during the cabling phase should eliminate the former. Network configuration under Windows is fairly straightforward also. With a bit of concentration and some of the tips below, you should be able to solve most problems.
Your hub will usually have a "Link" light for each port. This will be lit when the hub detects a live network connection. Check that for each computer you have switched on, the corresponding link light on the hub is lit. If the link light isn't on, it usually means you have a fault in your cable somewhere (including the plugs or sockets you've installed). You could also have a dead network card although this is less likely.
If the Link lights look OK, start the Network Neighbourhood icon on one of you machines. A window will open and should show every computer on your network (according to the name you gave each one (you can access the "Identification" details by right-clicking on Network Neighbourhood on each of your computers and going to the Identification tab). If you can't see any other computers, there are a number of possibilities. You may have not configured your network card to use the same network protocol as the other computers on your network (I suggest trying NetBEUI as the protocol). All your computers must be configured to use the same protocol. You may have used a different "Workgroup" name (under "Identification" - see above) for some or all of your computers. Or you may have a faulty network card.
If you can see the other computers on your network but can't access the drives or printers on the other machines, ensure that you have the sharing option set up properly for the drive or printer on the machine you wish to access. You can check this by going into Explorer (on the target machine) and right-clicking on the drive or folder you want to share. Select "Properties" and go to the "Sharing" tab to look at whether you have allowed sharing.
Before signing off, I should warn you that I'm definitely no expert on this stuff. I have simply followed guides and information written by others and tried to bring it together as simply as possible in this article (based on my own experiences).
Happy networking!