Building a home or small
business network or LAN is one of the simplest tasks when
working with PCs. So, do not make it more complicated than
it needs. You can buy the few components you will need
either separately or in a kit form. You will save money
buy shopping around for the components separately. The
kits will come with complete instructions for the first time
network builder. This is a choice for you to make.
Let's discuss the few items
you will need to start:
1) Hub
2) Network Adapter Card for each computer
3) Cables to run from each computer to the
Hub
The
Hub
Hubs are the basic connector for a
network, as a junction for the computers to connect together. If
all the cards are the same speed, 10Mbps vs 10/100Mbps cards,
buying a simple hub to match their speed is ideal and most
economical. If the cards pre-exited in the computers and were
mismatched in speed, you should use a switch, a device that
allows the faster cards to continue to communicate at the
highest speed and not slowed by the slower card. Today, hubs are
very inexpensive and the price of switches has fallen
dramatically. (under $50 for a 5port hub and under $100 for a
5port switch).
The
Network Adaptor cards
Although you will find older 10mb
network cards around in the $15 price range, they are almost
always ISA slot cards. I highly recommend you use 10/100Mbps
network cards, now in the under $30 range and they are usually
PCI cards, which dramatically increases data transfer speeds and
performance.
The
Cabling
Nearly all hubs and Network cards sold
today are what is often called 10base-T or 100base-T. That
simply means you use cables called Cat5, (sometimes called
"twisted pair")... they have connector ends on
them that resemble a telephone connector. The telephone
connector is actually smaller, called a RJ-11 connector, while a
10base-T connector is an RJ-45. But, they are nearly alike,
except for size.
Installation
All you do is install the network cards
into each computer, along with required drivers for the
operating system. The drivers will be included with the Network
Adaptor card or they can be downloaded from the manufacturer's
web site. Windows95/98 makes the installation of these
drivers simple. Then, plug in an appropriate length cable
to the hub, then cables out from the other two computers to the
hub. Remember that if you are using a hub that you do
not want a "cross-pin" or
"cross-over" cable. These are special cables
used to connect two computers without
a hub. Typically the cable you require is a
"patch" cable. This is all very simple, so do
not make it too complicated.
Software
The only thing left to do is setup the
software to let the computers communication. If you are using
Windows95 or 98, this is real simple. On each computer, go to Start/Settings/Control
Panel and double click on the Network icon. Click on the
tab at the top that says: "Identification." In these
boxes you distinguish each computer on the network. The top box,
Computer name should be different on each computer, (for our
purposes we will call each computer one, two and three,
respectively). The Workgroup must be the same on each computer
and you can use anything... "Workgroup" is
default. The bottom box, computer description is not really
important, but you must have something in the box.
Next, click on the
"Configuration" tab at the top. You will need to click
on the ADD button and then double click on Protocol. On
the right side choose, "Microsoft" and then on the
left side choose "NETBEUI." Now, the network
driver has been installed. Now, click on the button in the
middle of the window that says, "File and Print
Sharing." Click on each one so that a check mark appears in
front of each. Your network drivers are installed. Click
the OKAY button. The computer will want to restart, allow this
to occur by clicking on the Okay button that appeared.
Now, when the computer is
restarted, double click on the MY Computer icon on the desktop.
Right click on the "C" drive icon and click SHARING.
Check the "Share As" button and check the share type
as: FULL. Now click on OKAY. These steps are important on each
computer. It is the same except for setting the Computer name,
which is different for each computer.
The only thing left is to map
the drives on each computer. This is done so each computer knows
where to find the hard drives on the other systems. Open Windows
Explorer. Click TOOLS on the upper toolbar, then map network
drive. In the box provided, in the window listed as PATH, you
need to describe the path to the hard drives on the other
computers. Say that all computers have been setup now, you only
need to type this in to the computer named "one":
\\two\c This tells computer ONE that computer TWO
"\\two" has a hard drive "C" at \c or:
\\two\c
You repeat this on TWO to find
the hard drive on ONE, with this line: \\one\c and of course it
works the same on THREE.
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