Community poll forum: Do you have a home network?

Just my 2 worth - you can do MUCH better than $20/mo for unlimited and it's NOT either of those two computer wreckers. For example, Intergate is pretty much nationwide and it's $9.95/mo ($8.25 if you pay a year in advance) AND!! - you install no extra software like you do with AOHell/DirtLink - just set up your DUN and go (they do have a small downloadable file that will do all that for you - you just plug in the information as it asks for it). Another is Highstream - it's $8.95/mo unlimited, with a $5.95 ''setup fee'', or you can prepay for year or a full year and avoid the ''setup fee''. They do offer a 14-day free trial, also. Again, no extra software involved - with both Intergate and Highstream, you use whatever browser/email program you like, in their original configuration, not a modified ''proprietary'' version like others we've mentioned.

Again, just my 2 worth...

2 PCs one Dell and one custom-built. (Hard-wired)
1 Modded Xbox with 120GB hard drive as a local FTP server. (Hard-wired)
2 Laptops (Wireless)

I have eight (8) computers on my home network.

One to serve the Internet, one for work, one for pleasure, one for wife, one for daughter, one for son, a laptop for me, a laptop for wife.

Inet server is HP Vectra, PII 450 running XP Pro
Work is Dell GX260, P4 2.6G running XP Pro and Suse 9.3 Pro
Pleasure is Dell GX100, Celeron 550 running Suse 9.3 Pro
Wife is Dell Dimension 4100, P3 930 running XP Pro and Suse 9.1 Pro
Kids have Dell Dimension 3000s, Celeron 1.8G running XP Home and Suse 9.3 Pro
My laptop is Dell Inspiron 8000, P3 700, running XP Pro and Suse 9.3 Pro
Wife's laptop is Sharp Actius AL27, AMD64 2700, running XP Home

We connect to the internet with Starband satellite.

Chris

I installed a D-Link DI-614+ router to work with my cable modem. It came as a package with a DWL-650+ wireless cardbus adapter for my old laptop which had no wireless. I also ran four Cat 5E cables and purchased an ethernet card for my desktop computer which has the printer attached. It was pretty easy getting everything talking to each other and on the internet. Getting the printer to print for the network computer(s) was a little harder but despite a horrible, overseas tech who worked for HP (and was nearly impossible to talk to, and ended up, after two hours, referring me to someone who actually helped) I got it all working, mostly thanks to the great tech service I got from D-Link. I added a new laptop (and later a third one my daughter will be taking to college) and they connected in a snap. Then my free Norton Anti Virus subscription expired and I let them talk me into "upgrading" to Norton Internet Security. My computers immediately stopped talking to each other or to the printer (although they all still go online through the cable modem). Despite numerous attempts to get help from Norton (their sevice really sucks) my computers still will not talk to each other nor can I print from any of the network computers. You'll have to draw your own conclusions but I would say the network, both wired and wireless, as easy to get running until Norton screwed it up. If anyone has any advice, I might add that all the computers except my old laptop are running XP Pro. The old machine is Win 98 (not SE).

The current home network uses a Linksys BEFSR41 (ver. 0) router connected to a cable modem and three machines. The three home built machines - one AMD XP2100+ (#1) - and #2 and #3 with less cpu power are wired to the router. The three machines use Win98SE, NAV 2003, ZoneAlarm free 6.0.631.003, Spybot Search & Destroy 1.4, and Ad-Aware SE Personal (v1.06). Machine #1 is used for various applications - MS Office, etc., and web access. #2 is my wifes machine for games and web browsing. #3 has several drives and it's primary use is as a backup server although it gets used for drive setup/testing on occasion. As is obvious, I have file sharing turned on. Print sharing is also used - #1 is connected to a usb laser printer and #2 to a parallel port ink jet printer.

The above described setup seems to work quite well. My next updates are to upgrade #1 and #2 machines to WinXP. With that change, I'll probably have to move the old ink jet printer to the backup server machine or get a new XP friendly printer.

The experience of being able to move files between machines makes the work needed to setup the network worth the effort, let alone sharing the cable connection.

The future to my network will possibly include a network print server(s), and a NAS (network attached storage).

Without broadband, I don't see any benefit to having a home network. We live in a very rural area and although my wife and I both have computers we don't network them. She actually doesn't like the internet, and uses her computer for correspondence and games. I use mine for study and to maintain a few websites. Our dialup is not what you would call reliable, and we won't have access to broadband for a number of years yet.
I run an emachines AMD 2000+ with XP - SP1 I also don't use microsoft IE, prefer Firefox and Thunderbird, would use linux but haven't the time to do the tweaking it requires. Hope it will one day grow up.

I have a home network set up with three computers all with XP and a wireless connection. All three computers are connected through the same router. I am using a Linksys router i purchased myself. It was easy to set up all i did was follow the instructions that came with the router. The router itself gives each computer a isp address to use while the router uses the ip address tht my isp provider gave me. Have been using this system for two years now and have had no problems.

My home network has taken many forms over the last 8 years. At first I had a Novell Netware (v4.1) server with between 3 and 5 PCs (including servers) and a couple of networked printers. I had a Win 2000 server for a time also.

Client PCs have been DOS, Win3x, Win98 and XP pro. Most of my PCs and servers have been home built -- none with cutting edge hardware. I have been building PCs since the days of the 286. I am typing this from a 400 MHz Celeron running XP.

A couple of years ago, cable internet access became available in our area. At that time I installed a wireless network as well.

At present there are only 2 or 3 PCs on the network at a time. Internet access is shared through a Linksys Router. WEP is enabled, SSID is not broadcast, and network access is limited to only those MAC addresses that I specify. The IP address of the router has been changed from the default, as has the password and SSID. All PCs run ZoneAlarm Security Suite.

To date, the only virus, etc. that I have had on any of my home PCs came in from another network through an infected floppy. That was the Stealth C virus... quite some time ago.

Oops. We have DIRECT TV not DISH TV. We've had DIRECT TV for almost 2 years. We looked at DISH recently because of SBC's deal on it but they don't offer TIVO which is addictive once you've lived with it for a while.

Gerry

Computer 1 - Home built - ASUS motherboard, 400MHz Cpu, 192MHz RAM, Windows 98 SE.

Computer 2 - Older Dell - 450MHz Cpu, 66MHz RAM, Windows 98 SE.

Computer 3 - New HP, 1.2GHz Cpu, 200MHz RAM, Windows XP home Edition.

All connected to a 5-port Linksys Hub, then connected to Roadrunner high speed cable using 3 ISP's. All can be on network and/or internet at the same time. Also using a firewall on each computer and running Norton Antivirus on two computers and Trend Micro PC-Cillin on HP.

I have 2 laptops and two desktops hooked to a home network. The desktops are connected by ethernet cable and the laptops are wireless. I have printer sharing using two different printers and all the systems have file sharing and access to the internet via dsl. My dsl connection came with a modem router that allowed wired or wireless access. I also have a TIVO connected to the network.

I'm using a Netgear DSL Wireless Router for sharing my dsl connection and keeping my 3 computers connected. Currently I'm using wireless connection two notebooks (my wife's computer and mine) and also I have a pc for running games and p2p software.

I have networked 2 G-4's OS 10.3.9 with an old 8600 OS 9.1. It doesn't work very well and I find I am using a zip to transfer from the 8600 to the G-4's and only a floppy to transfer the other direction, if that is ever needed. Any ideas on how I can make this network work better? The 4th Mac is a G-4 laptop that I link to the G-4's with firewire only

The easiest way:
- see that each of these two computers has a Ethernet-port
- connect them directly with a 'crossed' cable or via a switch (or a router if you want to connect both of them to broadband internet)
That's the hardware side.

Then run the home networking wizard in Windows XP to take care of the settings side. Provide the right answers for what you want and follow the instructions.

The result: One of the computers has access to selected drives or folders on the other computer (or the other way around or both ways) and you can share a printer.

Hope this helps.


Kees

one Toshiba satellite pro, one Toshiba satellite, one gateway, not sure of the model as that one belongs to someone else. If you count the old old old dell demension i use as a file, print, mail server then it's four