Help spend my money

[Mandi]

Or subtitled, help me make a shopping list :D!

We desperately need to build a LAN at home. We have 2 desktops - one running Win2K Pro, and one running Win98. One laptop running Win98. 2 printers. I want printer and file sharing, and internet access sharing. I think I want Ethernet, but am willing to listen to bright alternatives. ISP is basic dialup, but cable is supposedly coming in the fall, so I'd like to design now, for a fairly easy swap out and upgrade to that. I'd also like it to bring me fresh coffee on demand, but I'm thinking that's not really gonna happen :waa: :P!

I live in a very remote island locale - it's an hour (and a plane ticket!) to the nearest real city, or a 12 hour ferry ride and 6 hour drive. It's winter, so the drive thing isn't happening. Basically, I need to be able to order online or not at all. We get Fed Ex and UPS, as well as good old basic USPS.

[ryount]

How hard is cabling between the 2 systems going to be? I don't have any experience with any of the new wireless or phone line LAN products. Linksys has something that uses the power lines in your house that sounds interesting. Check out http://www.linksys.com/ for info.

If you run cable between the 2 systems you could order a long cable with the RJ45 ends already on it, but for the cleanest installation you should install jacks in the wall on each end. If you did this you could avoid ordering a hub at this time by using a crossover cable.

In the current dial-up situation you are going to need a network card for each system. For cheap cards I have had good success with SMC. You can pick them up for $11.45 at buy.com:
http://www.us.buy.com/retail/computers/product.asp?sku=10300794&loc=410

Here are some instructions for sharing a dial-up connection:
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/ics

Sharing connections in Win2K is much easier and more reliable than 98. So hopefully you have a modem in that system.

Once you get Cable/DSL you are going to need a router or a 2nd network card in the Win2K machine. You can pick up a router for less than $100. I think it is worth it. My Linksys router worked great until it got hit by lightning. I know that SMC makes one that handles dial-up and Cable/DSL which might work well for you.

Hope that helps some.

[allfreethings]

For a good reference and review site for home networking, try http://practicallynetworked.com - they have a lot of good info including how-to guides.

HTH,

Joe

[Arthur]

Mandi, how much money do you want to spend? And how much do you want to have to configure?

The cheapest way would be to make on computer a server. Connect the printers to it and put two network cards (NIC) in it, so it can act as gateway to the cable connection. You only need one NIC for the dial-up connection, of course. Also get an ethernet hub (or switch) and NICs for the other computers. Cabling; either get pre-made, or get a roll of CAT5 cable and make the cable yourself.

If you don't want to make one computer a server (it needs to be always on if the are computers are on), you need a hardware router (e.g. the LinkSys router as mentioned, or a DrayTek router). If you have an old unused computer, a 486 or something like that, you can turn that into a server/router using for instance Freesco (Linux based, fits on a floppy). A hardware router needs less configuring most of the time. I think most hardware routers only support cable/DSL+ISDN, not plain dial-up.
You can set up one of the computers (Win2k would be best suited) as server and share the internet connection with ICS (built-in) or something like WinRoute.

There are also devices available that turn your printers into standalone network printers so there's no need to connect them to a computer (they're connected directly to your network).
If putting cables in the house if too difficult, you can install a wire-less network. But, this is much more expensive.

My 2 Euro cents...

Arthur

[Dunx]

I've got one of the SMC Barricade routers mentioned, and it supports both dialup and broadband net access, as well as sharing one printer. I've only used it for broadband, though, and haven't touched the printer sharing.

It operates as both a network hub and (if you want it) a DHCP server. If you want to use the dialup feature, then you need an external modem for it to talk to.

I've had very reliable results, actually, so I'd recommend it.

[ryount]

Do you know if that SMC can automatically use the modem if the broadband connection goes down? Something like that might help as a backup for a VPN.