Setting Up Your Own Home Network
You can, of course get all this through the phone company and pay a bit, but it can be really simple and fun.
The Hardware List List I Used
- Linksys WRT54G Wireless BroadBand Router
- A Few CAT5 cables
- A spare hard drive
- Not absolutely necessary; explained later
- My Computers
- A P4 and a P II (the spare, both with network cards, and occasionally my work laptop (wireless)
What You Will Get From The Phone Company
- A DSL Modem (look for a rebate when you purchase it)
- A Cat 5 and a Telephone Cable
- A CD with their software
Order DSL
Wait for a special or call and see if they will give you one. I used SBC Yahoo when they offered $14.99 per month for a year. Plus all the setup of course. But the list price was around $40 per month.
When I asked what happens after a year the attendant recommended calling to ask for what specials were running since they always have something going on, but it up to you to ask about it.
The Thing about DSL is that it uses the same wires as your phone line and once enabled you have to have an adapter on each jack where you have a phone or you will hear a slightly unpleasant hum.
Installing DSL
Since my computers are in the room whose outside wall has the phone junction I was able to install just one filter which I plugged into the jack that feed into the house so everything "downstream" was already filtered and phone ready. Using some Okie Engineering I ran a phone cable from the unfiltered part of the do-hickey and feed it through the bedroom window and directly to the DSL Modem. So you have to be willing to have the odd wire snaking through your bedroom window, but that didn't bother me.
Setup; the quick version
Phase 1
- Hook up the DSL modem as described, with the telephone cable to the DSL Jack and the Cat 5 to the Ethernet Jack of the DSL Modem
- Plug in the other end of the CAT 5 cable to your network card.
- Install the software and activate the account
- I used a spare hard drive so I wouldn't have all the extra software installed on my computer.
- If that works phase one is done
Phase 2
- Put your good hard drive in the computer
- Unplug the CAT 5 cable from your computer and put it in the INTERNET jack of the Router
- Plug another CAT 5 cable from your computer to one of the network Ports of the Router
- Turn it all on and if you are lucky it magically works
Things to remember:
You might have to setup the network card to automatically optain an IP address
Configuring The Router For Wireless And If There Is A Problem
This was the only thing that caused me a little problem sor there will be more Coming Soon...
