Gentlemen,
Without wanting to be redundant, . .
allow me to add this ;
Computer Hope Forum / Other / FAQ Solution Database / Internet & Network / Network / « previous next » Networks for Home/Small Business
Contents
1. Intro
2. Dial-up internet connection
3. (DSL/Broadband/Cable) Modem connected to a single PC
4. (DSL/Broadband/Cable) Router networked to all PCs
5. File and print sharing
1. Intro
Your goal: Connect together computers on a home or small business network. Share an internet connection. Possibly also share files and printers across the network. You don't need much knowledge in order to achieve this, but a little bit of understanding will help.You can skip the intro and use one of the links above to find the information you particularly need, if you're impatient.
O Computer, Where Art Thou?
In order to talk to each other, computers need to know where other computers are.
If you want to talk to another person, you need that person's telephone number. A similar principle applies to networking computers. The number that computers need to know is called a TCP/IP address. TCP/IP addresses (or just "IP addresses" for short) look like this:
192.168.1.1
248.2.98.3
48.7.2.11
10.0.0.2
That's four numbers separated by dots. Each number can be from 0 to 255.
Talking the same language
TCP/IP is the system that most networked computers use to talk to one another. It has been around for a long time and has become the de facto international standard. There are other networking languages (called protocols), but you do not need to worry about them, since you will only be configuring TCP/IP.
Commonly some computers will have more than one network protocol installed. IPX/SPX is often in the list of installed protocols. For our purposes, all extraneous protocols should be removed, in order to avoid conflicts, and to keep things as streamlined as possible.
Limitations
The obvious limitation with IP addresses is that we can easily run out of numbers. The maximum number of computers that could be addressed would be 255 x 255 x 255 x 255 = 4,228,250,625. At one time, it was inconceivable that there would be over 4 billion computers in the world, but we easily hit that limit today.
Jp
