In the last few years we have really seen the development of cool gadgets and home entertainment devices. Most households will have at least one computer or laptop. Devices like Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation can all connect to the Internet for an expanded gaming experience.
How can you connect all these devices and share your internet connection? You achieve this by creating a LAN. A LAN can be created quickly and easily, allowing sharing of resources and services. One example of a service that you might want to share on the network is a NAS device. These are effectively several hard disks in a caddy that are connected directly to your network and make a great place to store files, homework, photos and mp3’s.
What you need
To build a basic network you need the following:
Network cable(s)
You can buy these from most hardware and electronics stores. You want a cat 5e or 6 cable with rj45 connectors. If you are not using a switch or router to connect the computers you will need a cat 5e or 6 cross over cable. This is a special cable that has some wires reversed on one end and is used to connect similar devices.
The formal standard for ethernet network cables using rj45 connectors is TIA/EIA 568A and 568B.
Network cards
These are built onto the motherboard these days, but if you have an older motherboard you will need to buy a network card. They are inexpensive.
IP Addresses
You will need to have IP addresses for as many devices as you want to connect. In IP there are 3 ranges of private addresses. Private means that you can use them freely at home and are not useable on the internet directly.
Internet Protocol private IP address ranges:
I recommend the use of the 192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255 range, it lets you have 254 devices with IP addresses per subnet.
Note: If you already have a home internet connection with a router installed your IP addresses will need to belong to the same subnet. For example, if your router is located at 192.168.1.1 then the computers will need to be 192.168.1.100. The default gateway and DNS server is usually your router’s IP address.
Install the Network Card
If you do not have a network card built into the motherboard, install the new network card into the computer by following the installation instructions.
PCI Network Card
Connect the network cable(s)
Connect the network cable(s) to the required computers or devices. If you are connecting a computer directly to another computer without using a switch, you will need a cross over cable. if you are using a switch, then an ordinary cable can be used.
Cat5 Network cable
Install the Network Card driver
After you install a new device into a Windows XP or Vista computer the operating system should detect the device. Install the driver software cd/dvd that came with the network card and follow the driver installation instructions.
A network interface that is not connected will look like this.
network connection uplugged
Assign the IP addresses
Now that the network hardware is ready you need to assign an IP address.
Before starting, check that you haven’t received an IP address automatically.
You can see from the DHCP enabled line that an IP address was automatically assigned. You do not need to manually assign IP addresses.
If you didn’t get an IP address automatically follow these steps.
- Network Settings
Each network device will have a similar address, so device two might have an IP address of 192.168.1.101 and so on.
There you go. All things being equal, you now have a basic network connection established. This How-to has shown you the basic building blocks required to build a wired computer network.
September 30th, 2008
[...] You can find your MAC or Physical addresses by doing an IPCONFIG /all. See Setup a basic computer network. [...]