Develop Your SOHO Network

If you have a SOHO and you use more than one computer in the home, you don’t want to get two DSL connections to hook other computers up in the home with. Your husband might prefer to work in the basement while you work in the home office and your children might want to surf the net all at the same time. What you need to do is configure a wireless network in your home.
There are several options to consider in creating a wireless home network which is simply allowing other computers to communicate with one another in the same house. These computers can share an internet connection, printers, scanners, files and other gadgets and devices. If you have a SOHO business, you can partition applications and documents from certain users.

The different network types use different hardware, but they all have these components:
* More than one computer
* Hardware devices (such as a router) and software (either built in to the operating system or as a separate application).
* A path for the information to follow from one computer to another

The two most popular home network types are wireless and Ethernet networks. In both of these types, a routing device or router does most of the work by directing the traffic between the connected devices.

Ethernet networks are slowly phasing out because of the cables that you have to install. Wireless is becoming the standard for the home network because of the drop in cost of wireless components.

You connect the router to your dial-up, DSL or cable modem interface. This will allow several users to share one connection to the internet. Some of these routers are combo routers that combine both wireless and Ethernet technology.

If you're going to connect your network to the World Wide Web, you'll need a firewall. A firewall is simply a program or hardware device that protects your network from users that hack systems and offensive Web sites. Many software firewalls block all incoming information by default and prompt you for permission to allow the information to pass. In this way, a software firewall can learn which types of information you want to allow into your network.

There are fault tolerant firewall devices also build in routers in case of a network crash. These devices will make sure none of your information gets damaged.

It is a good idea to put a wireless network in your SOHO so that everyone can share access and use different computers instead of the business computer.