Long L. Home Networking Demystified
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CHAPTER 6 Designing a Home Network
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The Smith Family’s Home Network
Let’s walk through the design of a home network for the Smith family. Currently,
the Smiths have two PCs. Generally, parents Jim and Mary share a notebook PC in
the home offi ce and their children Mike and Sally share a desktop PC in Mike’s
room. The whole family shares a dedicated dial-up data line for Internet access.
Throughout the day, they take turns logging onto the Internet to check e-mail and
surf the Web.
TI P
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Members of the Smith family have grown tired of waiting for a slice of time to
get on the Internet at click-and-wait speeds. Moreover, two PCs just aren’t enough
capacity for their personal computing needs. Expecting that they need to double the
computing power, they plan to purchase a desktop for Mary and a notebook for
Sally. Mary’s desktop will be located in the home offi ce and be the center of the
network. The other desktop will remain in Mike’s room, which is located over the
home offi ce. The desktops will be connected to the network via Ethernet. Wireless
links are planned for the notebooks so that they can be online no matter where they
are located in and around the house. Ultimately, the family plans to replace the
desktop PCs with notebook PCs and make the entire network wireless.
The family strategy is to purchase an all-in-one printer that will be connected to
the network via a print server, thus retiring the old inkjet printer and a low-resolution
scanner. Mike’s desktop PC will be upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP
so that all networked PCs will have the same operating system. Although DSL and
cable modem broadband service are available throughout their neighborhood, the
family chose DSL based on their neighbors’ recommendations.
The Smith family wants to expand the network beyond the four PCs to include
wireless integration with the home entertainment center. Jim plans to purchase a
PDA with a Wireless-B adapter. The home entertainment center is located over 50
feet from the home offi ce, so Jim has decided that a wireless signal booster will be
needed to deliver the full capacity of Wireless-G to a media hub and game console.
Jim and Mary worked together to create the network design shown in Figure 6-8.
Figure 6-9 shows the completed home network design worksheet and planner (using
the tables in Figure 6-7), which includes a shopping list for everything they need to
purchase to build the network. The Appendix, “Home Networking Buyer’s Guide,”
offers hints and strategies for purchasing network equipment.
TI P TIP Home networking is easier when all PCs use a version of Windows XP.
An upgrade can be purchased for less than $100, a lot of money to most of us.
However, Windows XP is a signifi cant upgrade from the other Windows operating
systems and has many advantages, especially in the area of networking and
Internet security. When every PC has the same operating system, compatibility
issues are seldom a concern. At this writing, Windows XP Media Center Edition
2005 is available only with new Media Center PCs.
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Figure 6-8 The Smith family’s network design
Figure 6-9 Completed worksheet and planner for the Smith family’s home network design
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