How To Setup a Home Network

Planning
What do you need from your network?
Wifi or cables or both
Internet
Printing
Extra backup file storage
How fast do you need the network to be
Future expansion
What do you need from your network?

As the above list is pretty normal we'll presume that you want all of these when you setup a home network



Future planning
Do you have plans to add more network devices, even if the answer at present is no, its a good idea to allow for extra network ports when you setup a home network .

Equipment
DSL or ADSL modem/router with integrated wifi and cable connection hub or at least 6 ports, but this is dependant on the amount of nodes that will connect via wired connections.

Each computer will need to have a network card, if possible stick with a wired network as much as possible not only is it faster than wifi but offers more security, but for mobile working you can't beat wifi.

When looking for network cards read our wifi network performance guide and find out which cards to purchase.

Printing there are two choices here we can either use a printer with a network card or we can share a printer from a computer, the only downside of this is having to keep the computer sharing the connection on when you want to print.

Cable type the choice here is cat5 not only is it fast but can be run over large distances.

The network speed to a large degree will depend on the speed of the network cards and the speed of your router.

Fast wifi speeds are around 54mbits, but the further your wifi device is from the router the weaker the signal and the slower the connection.

Cables are around 100mbytes you can go up to 1gb, but this has a big impact on cost, not only this but your network will only be as fast as its slowest parts, so 100mbytes is fast enough for most.

If you want to create a file storage area that you can copy files to and share them, then investing in a network hard drive is a good choice around £80 gets you a 250mb drive.

The drive then sits on your network like a normal network device that other computer can access, copy files to and from.

Summary
The router is simply the centre of your network, as it manages your internet connection, allocates IP addresses to all your network devices regardless of wired or wifi, then allows all of them to connect and from your network.

If you are using any wifi devices, make sure you understand wifi security, unprotected wifi networks are all too common and are a big security risk from hackers. Checkout our other Wifi pages where we cover more on security

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computer adviser setup a home network article