1. PCstats guides you through the process of home networking

Networking, or connecting computers together to share information, has long been one of the more difficult areas of basic computing to get a grasp on, mainly because it is one of those points at which the generally friendly user interface of your average Windows box starts showing cracks, or possibly gaping holes ready to swallow up the unsuspecting user.

Now granted, since windows 98 started the process, Microsoft's OSs have been getting progressively better at automating the process of connecting computers together, but there is still the external setup required, and if something goes wrong... well it's good to know where to look to fix it.

The purpose of this article is two-fold. First, to enable you to set up your own home network and share files between your computers, and second to make you comfortable with basic computer networking terminology and practice. Internet sharing deserves its own article, and so is not part of this one.

First, some important terms. Skip them if you know them.

Ethernet Network adaptor: An internal device that allows computers to communicate with each other via electrical signals passed through cable. Also known as a NIC (Network Interface Card).
Hub: An external device with multiple connections (ports). A computer attached to one port can communicate with computers attached to any of the other ports. They are available in many sizes, most commonly 5 ports.

Switch: Similar to a hub, but more efficient. While a hub will send data it receives from one port out all its other ports and let the computers attached to it figure out who the data is intended for, a switch stores information about the computers connected to it, then sends data only to the computer it is addressed to.

Firewall: A term for a software program or hardware device which can restrict specific kinds of data from passing into (or in some cases, out of) your network from the internet. Used for security purposes.

Cable/DSL router: Network devices which combine the functions of a switch and a firewall. They also provide the ability to easily share a DSL or cable Internet connection. By default, all Windows operating systems use the TCP/IP protocol suite to communicate with each other through network devices. We'll look at this vital method of addressing computers on the next page.

2. Setting up a Network - WinXP

For Windows XP computers, open the start menu, then open 'my computer' and right click the 'my network places' option on the left of the screen under 'other places', and select 'properties.'
You will see a window entitled 'network connections' which will contain an icon for each network adaptor present in your machine. By default, these will be named 'Local Area Connection 1', 'local area connection 2', etc.

Right click 'local area connection 1' and select 'properties', then highlight 'internet protocol (TCP/IP)' and select properties again.Ensure that the option 'Obtain an IP address automatically' is selected, then click ok, and ok again.Repeat for each 'local area connection #' on your computer.

Now right click the 'my computer' icon on the start menu and select 'properties', then the ''computer name' tab.

Make a note of the computer name and workgroup name for each computer. These are used to identify the computer over the network. If you wish to rename any of the computers, this is a good time to do it, using the 'change' button. Having all the computers in the same workgroup is not essential, but it does reduce confusion. All Microsoft computers are members of the workgroup 'workgroup' by default.

Now select 'run' from the start menu and type '\\{computername}' where computername is the name of one of the other computers in your network. If all is as it should be, a window will open up showing all shared resources on that computer, by default 'printers and faxes' and 'scheduled tasks'.

Test this for all computers on the network as we have previously mentioned. You have now either networked your computers together successfully, or are staring at the screen in frustration. Please proceed to either the Sharing Files section or the Troubleshooting section respectively.

3. IP Addresses and what they represent

An IP Address is 4 sets of decimal numbers, 0-255, separated by periods (for example, 192.168.255.251) which form the address of a computer on the internet or within a local network, and allow it to be referenced by other computers.

An IP address consists of two parts, a network portion and a host portion.
Within a single network, for example the one you are about to set up, all computers will have identical network portions. In order for two computers to communicate with each other directly, they must be in the same network, and thus have identical network portions of their IP addresses.

The host portion of an IP address indicates a computer's unique identifier within its network. Every computer on a given network must have a unique host portion in order to communicate with other computers in the same network.

An IP address is always accompanied by a subnet mask, which separates the network and host portions of the IP address. A subnet mask is shown in the same format as the IP address (for example 255.255.255.0). As far as this article is concerned, assume that the values of the 4 sets of numbers in the subnet mask can be either 0 or 255.

Sets with the value of 0 indicate the host portion of the IP address, and sets with the value of 255 indicate the network portion. For example, with an IP address of 192.168.3.25 and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, the network portion of the address would be '192.168.3', and the host portion would be '.25'. This means the computer assigned this address is host 25 within the 192.168.3 network.

Things do get significantly more complex than this, especially when you consider that the subnet mask is not actually restricted only to values of 0 or 255, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

Now, on with the networking!

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