Networking Home Computers

Increasing Productivity With the Whole Family

Make Your Entire Family More Productive Have you ever thought of setting up a network of computers in your home and sharing software and hardware data over a single Internet connection. Home networks have many creative uses but the ideal situation is when you cant afford to upgrade every computer to the same features.

On a home network any computer can access devices on the host machine in the cluster as if they were their own. You can create a home network by connecting your computers with an Ethernet cable or wireless connection. The easiest and cheapest method uses an Ethernet connection which requires a series of network card cables for each computer and router.

Network adapters are similar to the old modems we use to connect to the Internet but in home networks they are used to communicate with all connected computers. Connect them together and install a network card in each. Then connect the cable to each computer that communicates with the server. This cable is not directly connected to the server. Connect to your router locally. This router must be connected to the host machines modem for each computer to access the Internet.

Once the device is properly configured (you should consult your device manual for details) you can configure your network from Windows on any machine. In Windows you can set up your home network the same way you set up your Internet connection. This time we will create a LAN (Local Area Network) connection. Windows will walk you through the LAN configuration once the computer boots up. When finished one of the machines can be connected to the network.

You can do this in Internet Explorer by entering the address and password required to access your router (the address and password required to access your router can be found in the router manual). Connected to any computer network can share files. open programs on remote computers play audio and video files on other computers share Internet accounts to browse the web download files and interact with people in completely different places.

If only one computer on the network can use the printer all connected computers can send documents to that printer for printing. Kids can enjoy multiplayer games and adults can message everyone at once or create group schedules. Since we are talking about a home network connected to the Internet we strongly recommend that you install an anti-virus program to block Internet worm viruses or other malicious spyware code. Firewall prevents but does not fix.

Only antivirus and antispyware programs can recover from damage. You should therefore install a firewall on your computers that allows access to it and install antivirus and antispyware programs on every remaining computer on your network. bank statement credit card information etc.) You can restrict access in one of several ways. You can put it in a new folder and then remove read permissions on that folder. Alternatively you can specify who can (and who cannot) access certain files using passwords from the Windows Control Panel.