Home Network setup

[Admiral558]

I've been thinkin about setting up a home network at my house and was wondering where I could find a guide or information on what hardware I would need and software for firewall protection(norton I'm guessing??) and installation. Currently my parents and siblings dont have very up to date computers and their total hard drive space combined is a little over 50 GB, two run xp home OS and one is 2000. Our internet connection is only 56k for now so I'm not sure how to go about this. Most network schemes I've seen have connections to cable lines or dsl fast connections. There is however 2 separate phone lines that the machines can connect to to access the internet with.

 

[ekÆsine]

Admiral558 you are a very easy person to help because you provided us with everything we need to help you. what you want to do is accomplished through ICS which stands for Internet Connection Sharing. the ICS software and even the firewall software is already built into winXP. win2000 also has ICS but no firewall software.

the hardware you need to share 56K differs from sharing broadband. all you need is a simple HUB or switch, there is no need for a router since all connections go through the 56k modem on 1 computer and all other computers go through this same computer to access the internet.

what this means is 1 of your computers must be an internet server and must be turned on whenever you want to use the internet. all other computers access the internet through this single computer. if the internet server is turned on but not dialed into your 56K account and another computer tries to access your internet, what will happen is that you internet server will automatically dial it up on request from the other computers.

what you need to do to set up the hardware is have 1 computer with a 56K modem, this is the computer that will be serving up the internet connection. any of your computers is capable of this. you need to have network cards installed on all of the computers, i am sure they all have one already.

plug the network card from the internet server into port WAN or port 1 on your HUB or switch. a switch is better than a HUB so choose that if you need to buy one. all other computers plug into ports 2,3 or 4. some switches or HUB have more ports than this. the other computers would never plug into ports 1 or WAN because anything plugged into WAN will disable port 1.

i think these show you how to setup ICS, also you should click the start button and click "help". search for ICS. if you need more help let me know.

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to setup ICS on winXP:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prcg_cnd_xham.asp

ICS setup on win2000:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows200...000/en/professional/help/HowTo_share_conn.htm

 

[ZeekeDaGeek]

An additional suggestion: If you opt for buying a hub, consider purchasing a router with the built in switch (hub). That way if you ever do go to broadband, you'll just plug your router into your broadband modem.

Just my opinion.

 

[Admiral558]

sweet, gonna get this up and running in a week or 2 when I get back home, will there be a compatability issue if I change my OS over to linux fedora core 1? setting up the dual boot right after this message...

 

[dr.dos]

You could check out FREESCO this small linux distro is designed to run on an old computer P1- floppy-16meg ram, hard drive not needed.
It does have a small learning curve but their site has lots of help for getting you setup.
I use FREESCO for my broadband on an old p-75 and talk about stable, uptimes in the years.