JUNE TUTOR ■

HOME NETWORK

network
your home
The dream of having your own home network has come one step closer to reality: a dream of multiple
connected PCs in your office or scattered around the house. Certainly if you have more than one computer
in your home, installing a phone line network makes a lot of sense. Home PNA 2.0 makes networking via
telephone jacks simple and inexpensive. In this guide we tell you how you can get started.

ny household with more than

A one computer will greatly ben-

efit from the installation of a
simple network. A network lets
your computers access any connected
printers, and they can also share a sin-
gle, high speed Internet connection. And
with a network in place, you’ll never
again transfer files using stacks of flop-
py disks: you’ll just copy the files to a
s h a red network drive.
Very few homes are wired for Catego-
ry 5 Ethernet during construction, and
installing the necessary cables later can
be expensive, unsightly or both. But
there’s a network already in place in most
homes—the phone wiring. Chances are
good that your computers reside in rooms
with phone jacks, and now there’s a way
to take advantage of this existing net-
work.
The Home Phoneline Network Al-
liance’s HomeP N A 2 specification per-
mits 10Mbps network connections over
your existing phone wiring, without in-
t e rfering with normal use of the phone
line. Products using this specification are
available from a number of vendors, in-
cluding D-Link Systems, NetGear and
3Com. You’ll find a review of the form e r
two at http://cgi.zdnet.com/slink ?20133.
In the following article, we discuss set-

86 June 2000 www.DITnet.co.ae ■ www.pcmag-mideast.com


ting up a phone line-based home net-
work using the 3Com HomeConnect
Home Network Phoneline Kit ($149 di-
rect, www.3com.com).
GET READY
B e f o re buying any hard w a re, take stock
of your situation. Each computer must
have a free PCI slot. (You’ll probably have
to open the case to determine this; if
you’ve never done so, consult the P C’ s
manual for instructions.) Each comput-
er must be within a reasonable pro x i m-
ity of a wall jack or of another comput-
er on the network. In a home with mul-
tiple phone lines, the wall jacks must all
connect to the same phone line. Mansion
dwellers should confirm that the two most
widely separated computers are no more
than 300 metres apart. The 3Com kit re-
q u i res Windows 95 or Windows 98, so if
one of your computers is running Wi n-
dows N T, you’ll have to choose a Home-
P N A 2 product that supports Wi n d o w s
N T, such as the D-Link D H N-910 10Mb
Phoneline Network in a Box.
If you plan to share re s o u rces, such as
a printer and a fast Internet connection,
the computer to which those re s o u rc e s
are physically attached must be powered
on in order for P Cs on the network to
www.DITnet.co.ae ■ www.pcmag-mideast.com
HOME NETWORK
use them. You may want to dedicate one
computer to act as a kind of server for
these re s o u rces. Depending on the com-
puter’s BIOS, it may be able to wake up
f rom standby mode automatically upon
receiving a request from the network. If
not, just leave it running all the time with
the monitor turned off to conserve pow-
er. Also, if you’re sharing an Internet con-
nection, you’ll want to run your person-
al firewall software on this computer
( m o re about that later).
Now you’re ready to purchase the hard-
w a re. A starter kit will usually contain a
pair of adapters and the necessary soft-
w a re ; y ou ca n p u rc has e ad d i t ion a l
adapters separately.
GET SET
If you’re not a network administrator, you
p robably view network installation and
management as an impossibly arc a n e
task, beyond the skills of the ord i n a r y
user. The Microsoft HomeClick software,
included with the 3Com kit, turns this as-
sumption on its head. To start, you run
the Network Setup Wi z a rd and follow its
instructions. Then you turn off the com-
puter, install the PCI card and restart. The
w i z a rd takes control again after the sys-
tem restarts and leads you through the
■ JUNE TUTOR
setup process. Repeat the process on a
second computer and connect the two,
either by running a phone wire between
them or by plugging both into wall jacks
connected to the same phone line. That’s
all you need to do to get your network
started.
B e f o re adding more computers to the
network, you should test and tune the
configuration of the first two. Launch the
HomeClick Network Center application
and check its Network Status page (Fig-
u re 1). Initially, both of the connected
computers should display each other in
their Network Status pages. If they don’t,
click the Refresh button. Click on Test to
test the network settings; if you find a
p roblem, the Network Center can often
fix it automatically.
Now decide which drives should be
available to other computers on the net-
work. Using the Network Center, you can
set each drive as shared for reading and
writing, shared for reading only or not
s h a red at all. With the first two options,
you can specify a password for access.
You can set sharing options at the indi-
vidual folder level (Figure 2). You can
also set sharing options directly in Wi n-
dows Explore r, simply by right clicking
a drive or folder and choosing Sharing
June 2000 87
JUNE TUTOR ■
f rom the context menu.
For each computer with a printer at-
tached, click Printers in the Network Cen-
t e r, click on the printer in the list and
check the box that makes it available to
other computers. You can require a pass-
w o rd for access to the shared printer.
Now for each other computer on the net-
work, click Printers in the Network Cen-
ter, click the remote printer that you want
to enable and follow the instructions.
You may need to supply the driver disk
that came with the printer. When the in-
stallation is complete, print a test page
on the remote printer. Printer sharing can
also be controlled from the Sharing tab
of the Properties dialog for a local print-
e r.
Note that multifunction printers may
appear to the system as multiple print-
ers, with separate drivers for feature s
such as scanning and faxing. Sharing
these features over the network may not
be possible.
You should now have two computers
networked, with file and printer sharing.
Repeat the preceding steps to add any
additional computers to the network.
GO!
Some homes have a fast Internet con-
HOME NETWORK
nection such as DSL, cable modem or
ISDN, but very few have more than one
such connection. A home network lets
all computers on the network share a sin-
gle connection. Internet Connection Shar-
ing (ICS) is a feature of Windows 98 Sec-
ond Edition, but setting it up can be a
complex task. Fortunately, the Network
Center software simplifies the process of
setting up ICS. The 3Com kit even comes
with a disk to upgrade an existing Wi n-
dows 98 installation to Windows 98 SE.
If your fast connection is a dial-up type
such as an ISDN line, you must adjust
your Dial-Up Networking configuration
so that it remembers your password and
does not prompt for confirmation before
dialing.
Now at each of the other computers
on the network, click Internet Connec-
tion in the Network Center and choose
the shared connection as the default (Fig-
u re 3). Try launching your browser or
email program; it should connect through
the shared connection without diff i c u l-
ty. Not only that, multiple computers on
the system can share the connection at
the same time. Here again, if you’re us-
ing hard w a re other than the 3Com kit
you may need to configure ICS y o u r s e l f
or follow a diff e rent series of steps.
WATCH OUT!
Security is always an issue when a com-
puter is connected to the Internet; it be-
comes even more important when a net-
work is involved. You absolutely must
install a firewall such as Network I C E’ s
B l a c kI C E Defender ($39). (For more in-
f o rmation on BlackICE, see the First
Looks and Tutor sections in our January
issue.)
Note, though, that security software
can be too diligent in its protection. Ini-
tially, our remote computers detected the
existence of a shared connection, but at-
tempts to connect always failed. Black-
I C E Defender turned out to be tre a t i n g
those attempts as attacks on the system
and blocking them. With a few modifi-
cations to Firewall.ini, per instructions
on Network I C E’s Web site (www.net-
workice.com), we solved the pro b l e m .
The 10Mbps connection speed of a
H o m eP N A 2 phone line-based network
is enough for most home networks. If
you have more than one computer in
your home, the benefits of adding a home
network are many and the costs are fair-
ly low. Just don’t tell the kids about mul-
ti-player gaming across the network, un-
less you’re prepared to add another com-
puter or two!