- Joined
- Feb 2, 2001
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- Chicago, IL
Helpful tips for home networking
Moderator Note: This sticky is an amalgamation of several sticky worthy posts which fall under the category of "Basic Networking Guides". Below is a table of contents for this sticky, as well as links to the full original threads the posts appeared in. Please direct any comments and questions to the original thread -- any new posts appearing in this thread will be deleted.
I'm writing this as a sort of mini-guide to help people out here in the Internet/Networking forum.
I have seen lots of posts regarding sharing Internet connections in their home. I have written this up to help people so they don't have to keep asking the same questions as people have before them. Don't fret, we've all been newbies before so it's no biggie.
Now, you've got your connection, whether it's cable or DSL or whatever. There are some differences you should note.
Cable is a shared medium, meaning you share your connection with your neighbors. You are basically one port of a switch so ANY traffic, even to another computer in your home that has another IP address, goes to your cable ISP and back before going to your other computer.
DSL is not a shared medium. You DSL modem is a router that works entirely different than a cable modem. If you have multiple IP address from your DSL provider the modem will route between your computers more efficiently and you will have pretty good speed.
Commercial routers- Linksys, D-link, SMC these are a few of the companies out there making commercial routers/switches. I personally have a D-link but I bought it at a time when prices were MUCH higher than they are now and this one was cheaper than the rest. I would recommend any one of the products by these companies.
The router's job is to route traffic. Duh, right? Anyways, when you put your router between your computer(s) and the modem it can do many useful things. Here are some of them
NAT(Network Address Translation)-basically taking the IP address your cable/dsl modem gives out and translating it to private addresses so you can hook up multiple computers and share an address. This is very useful for home networks and we even use this technology at my school district here. Now, the IP address your computer is using now is what's known as a private address. We'll get to that later.
DHCP server-You can have your router give out IP addresses to computers that are hooked up to it and then booted up. Very handy for quick setup although I am a fan of static addressing in the long run, and you'll see why in a second.
DMZ zone-This enables your router to forward any and all traffic to a single IP address. This requires static addressing so you're not forwarding to an invalid IP address.
Port mapping-This is like a DMZ zone but more controlled. You can enable only certain ports (ftp, http, telnet, SSH) to certain IP addresses inside your network. Again, static addressing is needed so as to not forward traffic to computers that are not there.
Setup on these routers is fairly straight forward. You take the cable provided by the router (usually in the box) and plug the router into the LAN port on your cable/dsl modem. You then plug straight-through ethernet (regular old cat-5) cable from the computers to the switch ports on the router. Reboot or startup the cable/dsl modem, start up the router, start up the computers and you should be good to go.
This is the easiest way to share a home network connection IMO. Sure you can set up a windows PC with ICS installed and configured to be a mini-router. You can also set up your own router using Linux, but you have to keep these computers on 24/7 and if you need for any reason to shut them down or restart then the rest of your computers will lose their connections to the Internet.
I hope I’ve made home networking a bit easier and haven’t overwhelmed anyone here. If you have any further questions feel free to post here or PM me. Thanks.
Moderator Note: This sticky is an amalgamation of several sticky worthy posts which fall under the category of "Basic Networking Guides". Below is a table of contents for this sticky, as well as links to the full original threads the posts appeared in. Please direct any comments and questions to the original thread -- any new posts appearing in this thread will be deleted.
- Post 1 -- Helpful tips for home networking (original thread)
- Post 2 -- GUIDE: Newbie Networking (original thread)
- Post 3 -- GUIDE: Windows networking for "dummies" (original thread)
- Post 4 -- Beginner's Guide To Creating A CAT5, CAT5/E Cable (original thread)
- Posts 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 -- Beginner's Guide on opening Ports (original thread)
I'm writing this as a sort of mini-guide to help people out here in the Internet/Networking forum.
I have seen lots of posts regarding sharing Internet connections in their home. I have written this up to help people so they don't have to keep asking the same questions as people have before them. Don't fret, we've all been newbies before so it's no biggie.
Now, you've got your connection, whether it's cable or DSL or whatever. There are some differences you should note.
Cable is a shared medium, meaning you share your connection with your neighbors. You are basically one port of a switch so ANY traffic, even to another computer in your home that has another IP address, goes to your cable ISP and back before going to your other computer.
DSL is not a shared medium. You DSL modem is a router that works entirely different than a cable modem. If you have multiple IP address from your DSL provider the modem will route between your computers more efficiently and you will have pretty good speed.
Commercial routers- Linksys, D-link, SMC these are a few of the companies out there making commercial routers/switches. I personally have a D-link but I bought it at a time when prices were MUCH higher than they are now and this one was cheaper than the rest. I would recommend any one of the products by these companies.
The router's job is to route traffic. Duh, right? Anyways, when you put your router between your computer(s) and the modem it can do many useful things. Here are some of them
NAT(Network Address Translation)-basically taking the IP address your cable/dsl modem gives out and translating it to private addresses so you can hook up multiple computers and share an address. This is very useful for home networks and we even use this technology at my school district here. Now, the IP address your computer is using now is what's known as a private address. We'll get to that later.
DHCP server-You can have your router give out IP addresses to computers that are hooked up to it and then booted up. Very handy for quick setup although I am a fan of static addressing in the long run, and you'll see why in a second.
DMZ zone-This enables your router to forward any and all traffic to a single IP address. This requires static addressing so you're not forwarding to an invalid IP address.
Port mapping-This is like a DMZ zone but more controlled. You can enable only certain ports (ftp, http, telnet, SSH) to certain IP addresses inside your network. Again, static addressing is needed so as to not forward traffic to computers that are not there.
Setup on these routers is fairly straight forward. You take the cable provided by the router (usually in the box) and plug the router into the LAN port on your cable/dsl modem. You then plug straight-through ethernet (regular old cat-5) cable from the computers to the switch ports on the router. Reboot or startup the cable/dsl modem, start up the router, start up the computers and you should be good to go.
This is the easiest way to share a home network connection IMO. Sure you can set up a windows PC with ICS installed and configured to be a mini-router. You can also set up your own router using Linux, but you have to keep these computers on 24/7 and if you need for any reason to shut them down or restart then the rest of your computers will lose their connections to the Internet.
I hope I’ve made home networking a bit easier and haven’t overwhelmed anyone here. If you have any further questions feel free to post here or PM me. Thanks.
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