Many people now have more than one computer in their home and with file sizes growing as they are moving data between one computer and the other can end up being more than a simple task. Also as more people are starting to get quick, always on Broadband connections and are spending more time online, they are finding they want to connect more than one computer to the Internet at the same time. This is where home networking can come in very handy.
Networking can obviously be a very complex subject, covering many different technologies, and when things go wrong if you don't know what you're doing things can seem very foreign. But, thanks to the Internet, most operating systems have been built around the TCP/IP networking protocol, which the Internet is built around. This means that with a little understandings of some of the main services being used by TCP/IP, trouble shooting most networking problems can be solved quite simply.
Also as TCP / IP is a networking standard used by most Operating Systems there is a set of tools which, although may be called slightly different names, are available on all Operating Systems. This makes troubleshooting problems on just about any system, with only the knowledge of a few choice tools, possible. Although these tools can be used via most Operating Systems this guide is mostly Windows based so some of the tools explained are only available to computers running Microsoft Windows.
Networking computers together used to take a great deal of knowledge and specialized equipment but with the tools available with Operating Systems and with hardware devices being developed for home use most of the configuration can successfully be done by wizards these days. This is all good and well as long as things are working together but when things go wrong where should you start?
The problem with product manuals is that although they explain how to set your devices up for certain configurations they don't explain what is actually going on. So if you have problems or a tricky configuration that needs setting up looking at the troubleshooting section and seeing 'Make sure your router is switched on' doesn't fill you with hope or help a great deal.
This has been written to give you a hand with the basics. You see unless you have a friend in the know your only other options are PC World (!) or teach yourself about the basics of Home Networking. By learning the basics of a handful of the concepts used in TCP/IP you can find that their are many possibilities open to you and things are not as difficult as they may sound.
This guide will run through some of the basic networking devices that you may use and what services they will be providing to allow your computers to talk with each other either just to share an internet connection or to share files between computers. This is an important subject as to network your computers together certain equipment gets used to achieve different things and knowing what each piece of equipment is used for will help when buying your home networking equipment.
