small hardwired network

teamo1

Baseband Member
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I am going to set up a small home network with two desktops now and possibly two or three more in a few years. I will hardwire the rooms that have the computers with cat 5 cable and home run them all down to a central location in the basement where the dsl line comes in. I plan on putting in a network box or something similar that has all of the phone internet and cable/satellite connections in one panel. How do I set up the computer network? I have a westell model 6100 modem now for the dsl that only has one phone line in and one cat 5 line out to the computer. Do I use the same modem and go from the line out to a splitter or a switch? Will this allow me to share the same printer/scanner for all of the computers? Thanks
 
If you are wanting to share your internet connection, you would need a router, which you can get with a built in modem. The phone line would go into the router, as would the ethernet cables from each computer. To share files, printers etc, just go through the network setup wizard (it's somewhere under my network places I think).

Be careful if you have a lot of extension cables, as this can cause problems.
 
yeah, you need a router, connect all your pcs to the router through your cat 5 cables. go to Network Places and on the side one of the links will be "set up a home or office network" or something like that. While your doing it it will have 2 bubble in boxes and one will say do not share printers and the other will say share printers. The do not share is automatically checked so make sure you check share.

thats about all.

-Q

*edited*
oh yeah.. and if you get a router with stand by, make sure its off. Many people have this problem at first, nothing will work for them. The accidently have it on standby. so yeah, make sure its off.
 
I was thinking of setting up a structured wiring panel in the basement where my dsl, phone, and satellite connections are. I looked at some of the panels that are made by Levitron and also Pass and Seymour. They sell all kinds of expansion modules and such for all of the wired connections in the house. I saw a module that splits the cat 5 connections from the router to 4 or 5 different computers. Is this the way I should do it or should I buy another router that has the ports built in? I read on another site that if you use the wrong type of connection for the computers on the network then you risk opening your files and printer sharing connections to the whole internet. I don't know if this is the same thing that they were referring to though. Thanks
 
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