Develop Your SOHO Network
If you have a SOHO and you
use more than one computer in the home, you don’t want
to get two DSL connections to hook other computers up in the
home with. Your husband might prefer to work in the basement
while you work in the home office and your children might
want to surf the net all at the same time. What you need to
do is configure a wireless network in your home.
There are several options to consider in creating a wireless
home network which is simply allowing other computers to communicate
with one another in the same house. These computers can share
an internet connection, printers, scanners, files and other
gadgets and devices. If you have a SOHO business, you can
partition applications and documents from certain users.
The different network types use different hardware, but they
all have these components:
* More than one computer
* Hardware devices (such as a router) and software (either
built in to the operating system or as a separate application).
* A path for the information to follow from one computer
to another
The two most popular home network types are wireless and
Ethernet networks. In both of these types, a routing device
or router does most of the work by directing the traffic between
the connected devices.
Ethernet networks are slowly phasing out because of the cables
that you have to install. Wireless is becoming the standard
for the home network because of the drop in cost of wireless
components.
You connect the router to your dial-up, DSL or cable modem
interface. This will allow several users to share one connection
to the internet. Some of these routers are combo routers that
combine both wireless and Ethernet technology.
If you're going to connect your network to the World Wide
Web, you'll need a firewall. A firewall is simply a program
or hardware device that protects your network from users that
hack systems and offensive Web sites. Many software firewalls
block all incoming information by default and prompt you for
permission to allow the information to pass. In this way,
a software firewall can learn which types of information you
want to allow into your network.
There are fault tolerant firewall devices also build in routers
in case of a network crash. These devices will make sure none
of your information gets damaged.
It is a good idea to put a wireless network in your SOHO
so that everyone can share access and use different computers
instead of the business computer.
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