home networking plssss help.........?

Question

i want to setup my own home network( especially wired network) with minimum expense. & iam really dumb on doing tnetworking but very much interested to do it by myself......pls tell me how setup my own network(any visual tutorial or any ebook) that can help me.iam having two computers which i have to linked directly...............
i want to ask one more thing, what is meant by LAN card or the ethernet card, its already built in to my both pc's. what's the use of it......
can i setup the network by using ordinary telephone lines ?
& how do i share my printer?????/
thank you.......

Answer 1

The Lan card is the network card that you use to hook up the computers.
A device called a router will connect the computers and share your intenet connection.
The lan cards that are built into the computer sometimes are finicky especially with dsl broadband
Other cards can be installed - pci ( white slots inside) , usb ( a port in the back or the front) , or even wireless network adapters can be used to connect the computers in your or the network.
You use special ehternet wire not not not telephone wire.
You may have a modem in the back of your computer.
These were used for dial up connections ( slower , older and tied up your phone line)
That modem jack is a bit smaller than the ethernet jacks
DO NOT PLUG the PHONE JACK into The Network card.
You may fry your compter.
Get a router
The routers can in two forms - wired routers - usually have four ports to connect 4 computers on your home network.
The other type are similar but also wireless as well.
Wireless routers are often on sale to get you in the door at big box stores. You can buy a wireless router if it is cheaper ( with a rebate) and turn off the wireless and have basically a cable only router.
You share printers by setting up a "network printer" in windows when you set up or reset up your printer again.


Last tip to make your life easy use networking program called Network Magic
Will set up your home network in a snap as well as your printer.
The first 30 days are a premium version with printer and file sharing.
If you know what are doing after the 30 days you can use the basic / free version or pay for the premim version if you think it is worth it.

http://www.networkmagic.com/


The major brands of routers are linksys ( premium brand),
and dlink . There are other brands -SMC ,Trendnet , ISRoboticcs plus others.
All the router brands are fairly good . None are bad.

Hope this helps

Answer 2

If you have a broadband Internet service, than you will probably need a router. I believe some of them, if not most, come with a wireless capibility, so that you can use wireless if you get it in the future. Anyway, you'll probably need some Ethernet cables in order to wire the computers together through the router.

From there, you hook the cables into the computer and into the router, which is already hooked up to the modem. You should then run the Network Setup Wizard that comes on Windows computers. If you'd like to share your printer with other computers on the network, you'd want to make sure you enabled that while running the wizard.

From there, your computer may need to be restarted, and then you'll be networked and on the Internet with shared printers.