Re: Ethernet connection

Sorry I missed your question. You can still this without a Hub, but this implies you are either going to use an older type of Ethernet cabling (such as thin or thick coax), or you are going to use a Wirless home network setup.

By today's standards (IE> twisted-pair network cabling such as 10BT, 100BT, 1000BT) for home networking, for all practical purposes that is, you need to use a Hub in order to network/share resources among more than two computers. More specifically, you will probably be using a Switch, which you can think of as a smarter kind of Hub. You mentioned a DSL connection, which implies a DSL "modem", which for purpose of this conversation can be considered network computer #1. Then you have your PC, which is network computer #2. Such a network of ONLY two computers does not require a Hub/Switch. If a Hub/Switch is not used, however, and twisted-pair Ethernet cable is used, then you will probably need to use an Ethernet twisted pair Crossover Cable. This ( 2 computer network) is as simple and basic as networking gets. Now, if you want to add a third computer, for instance, the spouse or Junior just got their own PC and they want to share the DSL/Internet connection, you must use a Hub/Switch plus you also need something else loosley along the lines of an Internet-sharing Gateway..... fancy name for the 'box' you need that supports IP-Address-Sharing.

When it comes to basic home-internet service, the company that provides such service, over Cable-TV-coax, over DSL telephone twisted pair, etc, do so by having set up their end of the service to operate in a specific and known way. The bottom line with this way is, they generally have programmed the connection, using formulas such as Public IP Address, Subnet Mask and Subnetting to effectively provide you with a single public IP Host Address. People loosley refer to this as an IP Address, but just be aware there is a thing called "subnetting" going on behind the scenese of such addresses. The important thing to be aware of is that the kind of public address you pay for from the cable company or DSL company is the kind that has been set up so that you can generally (operative word - generally) have only one PC / unix computer in your home that's connecting to the internet via this address. There are various exceptions to this general situation, there are internet service providers out there, even a few servicing residential customers, who will actually work with the customer to provide them a level of service above this basic service. With me so far?

For sake of argument, lets say that the world was introduced to Basic Home Internet Service at 8 A.M. on day 1. By the time it got to be....oh, somewhere around 8:30 A.M on day 1, there was a significant hue and cry from the home internet surfing community wanting to use more than one PC in their home to access the same internet connection that was originally installed to support a single pc/unix computer IE> they wanted a method for sharing this internet connection among multiple pcs in their home. A solution was invented. Actually, numerous variations of the same basic solution were invented, which is why there are umpteen different names that such solutions go by. The good news for you is that most of the growing pains and suffering with this particular solution have already been shaken out during the recent years when this solution was first being introduced and test marketed. Depending on which solution you go with, the name will vary. It really doesn't matter what we call it, the important thing to know is, it can be done. Depending on who it is that provides your solution, it will vary greatly as to how this solution is setup. I'm making the assumption you want to do this yourself DIY, so I will describe such a solution accordingly.

There are various brand name solutions targeting the DIY home internet sharing market. I don't want to plug any in particular, but it will probably help clue you in to what I'm talking about to mention a few, like D-Link, Netgear, Linksys. Each of these companies make a gadget, loosley referred to as "a box". Such boxes are actually designed to provide a variety of features and functions, to include internet sharing, as well as small Hub/Switch, perhaps some basic firewall features, as well as a slew of other features that may or may not be important from one home user to the next. Lets say you get a box that has a built-in 8 port Ethernet Switch; it will have 9 Ethernet ports on it, 8 for your home computers and the 9th for upstream connection (to your DSL modem, in this case). This box is mainly intended to allow people to have multiple (more than 2) pc/unix computers attached to their home network such that all of them can each surf the internet, get email, send/recieve files, audio, pictures, etc. Most of these "boxes" will have a built-in 4 port or 8 port Hub or Switch (think of a Switch as a better form of Hub). Many "boxes" these days also support Wirless Hub operation. Lets say you have 3 such pcs / unix network computers and will be using wire, not wireless. You also have your DSL "modem", which is network computer #4.

The DSL "modem" has an Ethernet twisted pair network port on it. In the home that only has one PC, the Ethernet port of the DSL modem is wired to the the Ethernet twisted pair port of the single PC. In your case, though, since internet sharing is desired, there will be more than a single PC in the home, so the Ethernet connection from the DSL modem will be plugged into a special Ethernet twisted pair port on your new gadget/box. This special port is generally labeled something like the "upstream" or "uplink" network port..... or it may not be labeled it all. A lot of these gadgets are made pretty cheap & inexpensively, some of them are manufactureed in third-world slave labor camps......these kinds of gadgets have effectively become commodity items like corn, pigs, cotton, sugar, oil, etc, so as a tradeoff to getting them cheap, you may also get something that's not so easy to figure out..... because it's cheap. Do not worry, thansk to the internet, most of the cheap boxes out there have been figurred out and can be made to work without too much hassle. You now make a separate Ethernet twisted pair connection from each pc/unix network computer to the Hub/Switch portion of your "box". In an existing home, it may not be easy or convenient to get a separate wire pulled into place for each of your home computers.....which is why Wireless became popular. In any case, lets assume you can get these wires put into place without causing your house to burn or fall down.

The last basic area that needs to be addressed to make this work involves "setup" of the "box" as well as checking/tweaking some paramaters on each of your home pc/unix computers. Some brands of "boxes" are designed to automatically figure out how to setup themselves to work in a basic home-internet-sharing-environment..... and some models of such brands actually work in this respect. Most "boxes" will include a CD that includes a little diagnostic/setup program that you can run to monitor to see if the box is setup properly and running as desired, and if not, the same program allows you to make changes to the setup to make this so. Even though I've already written a small book here, I'll hold off on going into potential deeper details, for now. Lets assume the automatic "setup" feature is in play and working. You still need to check the IP Setup on each PC to make sure each PC has something called "DHCP" enabled. This is a parameter that tells each of your PCs to look to the "box" to get required parameters for network operation. These internet-sharing boxes perform several functions in order to make internet sharing work. One of them is the function of DHCP Server. The box runs as a DHCP Server and will hand out private addresses to each of your home PCs. An example of a private address is one that stars off with something like 192.168.X.X, or 10.X.X.X Enabling "DHCP" on each of your pc computers turns them into a DHCP Client.


If you are sombody who alread had a single home PC environment and upgraded to multiple home pcs, you may need to check that one pc that use to be the only pc to make sure it does not have any old networking parameters that it remembers about how things used to work before the upgrade. These old parameters may prevent it from working with the new setup.


Summary: when you have a single home PC connecting to the internet through a coax-cable or telephone-DSL type connection, there is a single Public Internet Host IP Address given out by the provider and loaded into your singe PC to use. This single PC generally gets this public address by having DHCP enabled (DHCP client), and then receiving the address from a DCHP Server somewhere upstream (either the DSL "modem" or other network device running somewhere else upstream, like, at the DSL telehphone company computer facility). When you upgrade to have internet sharing of multiple pcs/computers in the home, your home PC will generally be set to use private IP Addresses instead of Public Addresses. This upgrade involves adding a "box", like the gadget desribed above. This box will now be the computer that gets the single public Internet Host IP Address as given out by the provider. It (the box) in turn uses an internal mechanism (FYI, called NAT, but this is not all that important to know here) to handout private IP addresses to each of your home computers. Basically the box sits in between the public internet and your private home network, and continually maps out the connections between your private computers at home and the public computers on the internet.

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