h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A503957

I did this thing (I actually installed Category 5 and have a patch panel and hubs under the stairs, sad b******d that I am).

What about switches? We use a switch, and I've been led to believe that it's much faster than a hub.

Yep, we have a home network. Six computers. The only person in my family who doesn't have a computer is my mother.

Hello,

Nice article, definitely useful for the home networking neophyte. This would be great for the Edited Guide!

However, I feel compelled to mention another option that perhaps should be included in the article (or a separate article): Wireless Ethernet.

There are two standards out there that have become popular for Wireless Networking. 802.11b is a standard developed by Lucent and popularized by Apple's Airport and Orinoco cards for the PC. It's done the best so far, with a range of about 300 feet without an antenna assist and speeds of 11 Mbit/sec. The next gen is rumored to go up to 54 Mbit/sec. About 10 computers can share a base station or talk to each other peer-to-peer, and the base often can do PPP and NAT sharing. The other standard is HomeRF (developed by Intel and others). It's been a bit crippled at speeds of only 2 Mbit/sec, but it's been given a boost in performance and has Intel behind it. Both involve spread spectrum (but in different ways) across radio bands (802.11b uses 2.1 GHz, I don't remember for HomeRF) and both support some encryption (although you should use your own for extreme security).

I personally use 802.11b and love it. I have an Apple Airport base station into the DSL modem and two Farallon wireless PCMCIA cards (one for a Powerbook, one for a Compaq laptop). It's a bit more expensive than threading CAT5, but it's nice not to have cables (I can even go up to the roof of the building and use my laptop). In addition, there have been some large-scale networking projects out west (so the entire Presidio in SF has 802.11b coverage, and Starbucks is going to deploy them in coffeeshops).

I also suppose you could mention firewalls and NAT for when you hook that network up to the outside world (via cable modems or DSL), but I think that's enough for a separate article actually. As is Wireless Networking I suppose.

Yes, a switch is faster than a hub. In essence, a hub is just a shared wired for every port, meaning that collisions on ethernet are quite possible. A switch instead creates a dedicated line between two ports, so there are no collisions. The problem is that this requires more connections internally (N! I think?) as well as dedicated circuitry to analyze incoming packets. So switches are often more expensive, although there are some affordable consumer models now.

Yours,
Jake

You rather forget to mentionany operating system other than win9x and apple. BeOS has adequate network support, and linux has almost from day 1 gone out of it's way to support obscure networking technologies, accessed via standard tcp/ip. You can also get distributions of linux that will turn a 386/486 box into a very good firewall and mail server.
HomeRF 2.0 has now been officially abandoned by microsoft, so itis almost certainly a dead duck.
And you think you are sad, I'mbuilding myself a 32node beowulf clusterin my bedroom

Switches are good if you have large numbers of ocmputers (I have seven at home, which is not large!). The overall bandwidth is limited by the slowest link in the chain, so even if you put in a switch you won't increase the transfer speed from your server unless you also add extra network cards - ultimately the last leg ot the server is shared between all the clients. I have heard anecdotal evidence that switches improve network game performance, but even then my game-playing colleagues assure me that a 10Mbit hub is quite sufficient as most games are designed to play via the Internet with a tiny fraction of that bandwidth.

I really like this entry,
it's comprehensive, and understandable for those who (like myself) are not the most technically adept

I would actually refer to this entry if I were going to network my house.

This thread has now been recommended.
It'll soon be sent to a sub-editor for polishing, and featured on the *What's coming up* page.
When it's all ready you'll get an email from the great man himself Mr Moxon, and it'll go on the front page
This thread will be moved from peer review to the entry - the editors will be along shortly!
Enjoy your moment of glory

please can someone make this read a little less like "if you wan to do networking, use microsoft", as microsoft networking is the worst version i've ever come across. beos is better, and linux is ridiculously good.

As a die-hard Mac fan and hater of all Billware (based on fairly extensive technical knowledge and experience as a network manager) I can't say I am pro Microsoft. I think the thrust of the article is that if you are in the dung-beetle category (i.e. you already have Windows, twenty billion flies can't be wrong, etc. ) then the built-in networking is now approaching functional.

I don't doubt (much) that bill has finally got his networking to work, but then he has been working on it since dos 3 so it is about time. however most of this stuff is machine independant, let alone os independant, so with mild rewritting to make it less microsoft centered, it would be a better article. at the very least you could point out that microsoft is currently the worst supported operating system in terms of network support. ok, the cards have drivers, but the operating system gets in the way if you want to do anything more than file sharing.
This is at least partly due to his "lock in" attitude to make it so you have to use his naff tools.

Editorial Note: This thread has been moved out of the Peer Review forum because this entry has now been recommended for the Edited Guide.

If they have not been along already, the Scout who recommended your entry will post here soon, to let you know what happens next. Meanwhile you can find out what will happen to your entry here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/SubEditors-Process

Congratulations!

oy, i have a headache. this is all a bit too technical for me!!!

anyway, does anyone have any suggestions as to the subediting before i start? keep in mind that my computer expertise is very limited...

oy, i have a headache. this is all a bit too technical for me!!!

anyway, does anyone have any suggestions as to the subediting before i start? keep in mind that my computer expertise is very limited...

You can mail me - use my proper name (Guy Chapman) separated by dots. My internet service provider is BT Internet. See if you can guess my email address.

clever!