Networking Home Computers

Networking Home Computers: Does your family have computers all round the house? If so have you considered networking your computers at home? It is relatively easy to connect each of your computers together and so share their data, their software and also their hardware – while using a single internet connection.

There are lots of quite creative uses for networking home computers, however it’s a perfect situation when you cannot afford to upgrade each separate computer to the same capability. Because on a home network, each computer has full access to the equipment of the better machine in the group as if that equipment were it’s own.

Connecting computers with either an Ethernet cable or a Wireless connection can create a home network. The easiest and cheapest method uses an Ethernet connection, which requires a series of network cards, a cable for each computer, and a router. The network card is similar to the old modems we used in the past to connect to the Internet, however in a home network, it’s used to communicate with every computer that’s connected to it.

First, choose the computers that will connect to each other and then install network cards inside each of them. Then connect a cable to each computer that will communicate with the server. These cables won’t connect to the server directly. Instead, they’ll connect to the router. To enable Internet access for each computer, this router will need to connect with a modem of the host machine.

Make sure you read the instruction manual of your equipment thoroughly. Once the hardware is set up correctly, then you can setup the network from Windows on each machine. Within Windows, you can set up a home network similar to the way you set up an Internet connection. Only this time, you will be setting up a Local Area Network (LAN) connection.

Windows should walk you through setting up a LAN after starting the computer and once complete, you can begin to connect one of your machines to the network. You can do this through Internet Explorer by typing in the address and password required to access the router (the address and password required to access the router will be in the router manual).

Connected to the network, each computer can send files back and forth, open programs on a remote computer, play the sound files and videos located on another computer, and share a single Internet account to browse the web, download files, or chat with someone in an entirely different country. If a single printer is available on only one computer in the network, every connected PC can send documents to it and print them out. Kids will enjoy the ability to play multi-player games and adults will enjoy the ability to blast a single message to everyone at once or maintain a group schedule.

Since we’re describing a home network that will connect to the Internet, you’re strongly advised to install a protective firewall program to thwart Internet viruses, worms, or other damaging spyware code. Firewalls prevent – but they don’t repair. Only anti-virus and anti-spyware programs can reverse damage. So you should install a firewall on the computer that grants access to the computer, and then install an anti-virus and anti-spyware program on each of the remaining computers in the network.

If you have files that shouldn’t be shared (bank statements, credit card information, etc.), you can restrict their access in one of several ways. You can put them in a new folder and then remove the “read” permissions for that folder. Or you can specify who can (and who cannot) access specific files with a password from within Windows Control Panel.

So now you can head of and get all the family connected together with your own home computer network!