Does anyone know of a good book for home networking that has good technical information, along with the basics?
Also, it seems as though telephone wiring can be daisy chained without much problem, but why does the ethernet signal need to be split through a router? From my DSL line it’s only a matter of a different frequency.
Thanks!
Ryan
Replies
There are 5 things you need to know about a home network:
Wide Area Network/Internet port: This is where you connect to the big bad world. This can be the ISP you dial into over the phone, or it can be the port on your DSL router that connects to the phone line, or it can be the coax cable that connects to your cable modem
Now, the signal you get from the big bad world is pretty much useless for anything but downloading slow internet data. It is converted by the following:
Cable/DSL Modem: Short for Modulate/Demodulate. This device changes the signal it gets from the above into something usefull for you - an ethernet signal. Your data has gone from the long but cheap to build gravel backroad to an 8 lane limited access expressway. Much faster, and much more sensitive. You can cut the phone line in front of your DSL modem and reconnect the two wires with wirenuts and be good to go. You cut the ethernet wire after the modem and reconnect them, well you won't have much luck with wire nuts. That same phone line would take about a day to flow all the data needed to print a photograph to a printer, but would only take a second on the ethernet. One line is a long haul trucker, the other is a dragster. Your modem takes the data out of one vehical and places it in the other.
Router: Normally the above is built into this device. The router decides if every bit of data that it sees belongs under it within your home network (like copying a file to another computer), or if it needs to be sent out to the big bad world... to another router that makes a similar decision somewhere many miles away.
Wireless 802.11a/b/g/n Access Point or wired Switch/Hub: This is also normally built into the Router, but can also be seperate. The wireless access point maintains a network connection over the airwaves to the wired router. A switch/hub allows connections to other wired devices, like computers, printers, etc.
Network Adapter: This is what talkes to the above. It can be wireless and built into your laptop, or wired and commonly built into your desktop. A telephone modem is a type of network adapter - the router sits at your ISP.
Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
Thanks.
I already have a network set up. Just looking to do some more complex things with it. I want more info on not only the basic stuff, but more technical information. I also am planning for a new house, and want to do some more research to see how it will be set up.
Ryan
A little misleading, about the wire-nuts on the phone line vs. wire-nuts on the ethernet cable....I almost tempted to try it out for grins....but bottom line, you aren't getting the data to speed up once it goes through the modem......it might be much more sensitive on the ethernet cable, but it can't be faster....
Absolutly right, 1.5Mb downoad is flows no faster on a 100Mb line. Sending a 50MB PS print job to a networked computer goes much faster though.Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
Well, a phone line is connected to your house by a terminal block, which is two wires squished by a screw together. I've never seen an ethernet connection put together with a screw holdown - they are precision pieces. Even the punch down connectors leave little wiggle room.
Heck - try it and see if it works! I was never able to get an unterminated rg58 ethernet cable to work without being properly terminated, I cant imagine a twisted pair setup would fair any better.Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
Well...
I got rid of my old terminal block & put in a small punch-down block....pretty simple, not the big CATV/Data/voice things that go in the really wired house(s)
I've done a bit of crimping RJ45 on Cat5e, and it is indeed finicky....but the bottom line is it's still copper wire, and if I didn't have soo much else to do I'd try cutting one of my patch cables, nut it back together, and see if it worked....my gut sense is it would, though perhaps not very well ;-)
I don't think I would call a modem a network adaptor. It has an IP address but is just a translator for the computer. That's just about the textbook definition of gateway. Newer modems have the routing built in, but the old ones rarely did. Sure makes things easy now, though.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
go to this site, they have tutorials on home networking, etc. pretty good. levitonvoicedata.com/
One word to make your home network simple- "wireless"
Bob
If you ever plan on using your network for LAN games, go wired.....View Image
Wireless has a couple of downsides. My brother set up a wireless router and his son's computer hooked up fine. Couple weeks later it wouldn't work. I checked his son's computer and I could see 6 other routers in his neighbors' houses, including a one new one on the same channel. On the other hand, it is nice when I go to my Mom's house as I can get on the Internet by connecting through the neighbor's wireless network.By the way, I also saw an interesting show once where they showed how the "bad guys" can use a tuneable receiver to hook up to wireless security cameras and use them to look inside your house to see if anyone is home.Me, I like wires.Steve.
Try looking around this site. You will be able to find out just about anything that you want to. The regulars are very helpful and will go out of their way to help.
http://www.cocoontech.com/
Go to a bookstore and look through what they have. You can decide if it's what you want/need or not. One little thread won't tell you everything. I just took a class on networking and even that just scratched the surface. I asked the teacher if we could get more acronyms, as a joke.
google IT networking and look around. You weren't specific enough to know what you really need and if you want to read things that are specific and filled with minutiae, IT networking books are precisely that.
Phone wiring doesn't need the digital bandwidth and the copper wire infrastructure throughout the system won't support high speeds. That's why they installed fiber to the "last mile" unless you're out in the middle of nowhere and then, it's not gonna happen until the phone company can make money on it. High speed on copper wire doesn't go unlimited distances without needing amplification. Also, a phone uses one pair of wires for each line. Ethernet uses one pair for transmit and another pair for receive.
In networking, you have more than one computer. Each computer has an IP address and a MAC address (the unique number that the manufacturer assigned to that particular NIC, or Network Interface Card) and those are used as the computer's address, based on which kind of network is used. When your computer tries to communicate with another one, it needs to know the destination and can't just send the data out to the whole network without knowing precicely where it's going. That would be like having a whole room of people talking at the same time with no way to make one person know that you want to talk to them and the destination address is like raising a flag that only they can see. A router decides on the best path for the data, based on network traffic. There are ways to rout in a network by using the MAC address, too.
Define what you want the network to do for you. As I said before, google IT Networking and you'll find lots of info. If your computer has XP, there's a lot of info already there, in the Network Help area (there's a section on 'setting up a network'). Start with the basics and go from there. Look at the bookstore and see what's available.
Some devices have signal pass through, but it's best to run all peripheral devices through a hub or router.
I think hardwiring is best, it allows much faster speed and it's more secure. We do web demonstrations from our home office and the difference between hardwired and wireless is significant.
Although it is nice to be sitting out by the pool with the laptop while "working", there are times when we need the hardwired connection for transfer speed.
I'm on cable (Comcast). Signal comes in to the cable modem. From there it goes to a router. The router is wireless as well.
All peripheral devices (another desktop, two laptops, two printers) are connected to the router.
The laptops also have wireless cards, so they can be physically disonnected from the network.
The router has security settings so that in order to have access to my wireless network, I have to add in the devices. Takes about 30 seconds to generate a key and get them in the system. I do this if we have a guest (business or house guest) who needs access while at my house.
When they leave, we remove them and they are again locked out.
The beauty of the home network is that any computer in my house can print to any printer, etc.
I have my main desktop and one laptop set so that I can access files on the other computers from my desktop/laptop, but not vice-versa.
Once in use, it's quite efficient.
Probably doesn't answer your question, eh? There are a few ways to skin this cat, much depends on how you live/work and what you need to do with you devices.
Mongo