Home and Small Office Networking Guide

So what is a network?

A network that supports the networking of many devices and a protocol to ensure that they can communicate with each other more effectively. To understand how best to operate as networks make on each element of the network to be visible as a layer, one above the other. The conceptual model that describes this layered model, as the OSI reference model, the seven layers is unknown. All network professionals use them in their dayTag design and engineering.

For our purposes we can simplify into three levels, namely from bottom to top are:

1 The physical layer - the cable between the machine (usually a 100BaseT uses four pairs), the map in the back of the device (802.3 Ethernet NIC) or wireless network adapter (802.11g, etc.), etc.

2 Datalink, network and transport layer - Responsible for the management of the addressing, routing and packaging of data around theNetwork includes the Internet Protocol (TCP / IP), games and file transfer protocols (eg UDP) and the VPN connectivity from home to office (PPTP or IPSec)

And the 3 ', Presentation Session and Application Layer - file sharing and database access in the office (NetBIOS, Named Pipes, NFS), surfing the Internet (HTTP, DNS), email (MIME, SMTP, POP3) and banking or shopping on the Internet Security (SSL / TLS)

They occur in layers like this helps us to understandwhen you buy software or hardware, layer (s) and when it does, what is to take care of us. It is the connectivity to other Wide Area Network (WAN, ie the Internet) (ie LAN, to access a printer), security or access to my own access network. It 'very useful when diagnosing problems with the network. Network Addressing

A letter to your friend in the next town or a country halfway around the world of fashionPost-system requires an address that will limit the address moves from country to house number, exactly where he lives, and your friend's mailbox, the postman the letter a. Networks include digital work in a similar way, only instead of emails moving digital data packets.

MAC address - Media Access Control address identifies a particular piece of hardware on the physical network and a system with a long series designed for the worldunique. It 'set in the hardware in the place of manufacture. An example of a MAC address is 1A-1D-2F-7A-3C-9C (Layer 2).

IP Address - The IP address to uniquely identify all network interfaces, which usually endpoints on the Internet or your local IP-based network (in an office). Within the local or global (Internet) IP address space must be unique, otherwise the IP routing protocol will not know where to send the packet. An IP addressis a physical MAC address as described above, may be assigned, the assignment is done in the routing tables of routers in the network hardware. An example of an IP address is 192.168.0.1 (Layer 4). The addresses are divided into classes A, B and C each have a larger address space requirements for large organizations. Small offices and internal addresses are almost always Class C 192.168.0.nnn and the network is open to anyone to use on any small home network.

DNS names (andServer) - Domain name server addresses are based only names that refer to points with a level of uniqueness. We all know the Internet domain names such as ours in the resource box. The DNS name in this case is the "'element cryopc a full address. DNS Server to store all host names and IP addresses that reflect them.

Network Security

The home hub / router built in the rule of security features, includingFollowing:

MAC brand - With the MAC address of hardware, such as a list of authorized access to network hardware. It is a good precautionary basis, but unfortunately a hacker can spoof a known specific MAC address and gain access, if you really want. It sounds simple on the opportunists.

WEP and WPA - are the most common form of wireless network encryption and security. Without the WEP or WPA for your wireless network is uselessOutsiders. WEP is now considered rather weak, since the hackers have ways of breaking it is proven to be fast enough even broken and no longer safe. WPA is more secure, because it is more difficult to decipher (which has a much longer passphrase) and once broken leaves only a small window of opportunity for exploitation, since it is a code for each package that is constantly evolving. TLS encryption is used as the lock internet checkout. But the network is onlyalways be used as secure as the password to protect them, so choose a dark one.

VPN, SSL / TLS and IPsec - Most of us do not even know we are with these technologies, but they all operate similarly. They use sophisticated encryption and reliable way to ensure your private information over a public network is not visible sent snoopers. SSL / TLS is used more frequently, and you'll be recognized as a lock in money, or encryption used when entering credit card data if InternetShopping.

NAT - Network Address Translation is not really security at all, but save in a rapid decrease in availability of IPv4 addresses on the Internet, but to protect your private network addresses from the outside the impression of the Internet, only a single address (public address of the router) is access to the Internet from the network. This means ad hoc access to the local network from the outside is much more difficult withoutinternal network device initiating a first connection (and then through a NAT).

Typical of the network equipment segment - a segment which is not really a device, it is a single cable network can be connected to different machines, but sometimes only a single machine. It may be useful as a device just like the cable itself has limits, thinking skills and resource requirements on the network.

Router - associates an addressin a speech to the next in another saved by routing tables and protocols on the device, typically in the memory.

Hub / Switch - Most switching hubs are hubs like any network port on the hub acts as a separate segment of the LAN then be able to use the full bandwidth of the connection and it is not known to all on the same LAN.

Firewall - This can be software or special hardware is based widely regarded as the best. Windows has abuilt-in firewall, and most of the home hub / router, but have also pre-configured and integrated. Firewall rules to determine what you might rent from, and network. They are usually pre-configured connections that we have only internally (to avoid attacks ad hoc) and to be started again in traffic only to certain well-known safe havens, such as those commonly used for Internet, http and ftp. The games can sometimes have problems with firewalls, as they use other ad-hocPorts. You need to create custom rules to deal with this problem.

Wireless Access Point - Wireless networks are more effective in air segments of the network. The access point acts as an access point and also provides network security discussed in the previous paragraph. In a small network, it is often useful to combine multiple network devices into a single physical device. This is why most small office router and a firewall, hubs, and wireless access pointbuilt in. However in a medium sized organisation or large enterprise single devices need to have more reliability, capacity and security and so tend to be dedicated devices to a single purpose. A firewall for example can cost US$100 with a hub and router built-in or for a government departmental web site it could cost US$40,000 as a single appliance.  

Benefits of different types of Network

Cable based networking - 802.3 Ethernet, which typically supports 100Mbit/s (CAT5 cable) or 1Gbit/s (CAT5e cable) speeds and higher if you are reasonably up to date. Most network devices are backward compatible and will fallback to the speed of the slowest device in the network.  Cable is the best for reliability an speed.

Wireless Networking - It is defined by the standard 802.11a, b, g, and n (at Draft 2.0 stage at the time of writing this article). Wireless offers flexibility, roaming, convenience but quality of reception can be very patch in large or complex buildings and this affects connectivity and connection speed. In addition to the standards MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) uses multiple antennas to increase signal strength and quality, increasing range and available bandwidth.

Broadband, ADSL and Cable - all use local telephony cable and fibre optic trunks to provide homes and small businesses with relatively high speed Internet access. Each one uses a different technology standard for implementation and you must buy the correct router or modem. Setting up your own home or small office network Based on the information provided above you need to decide what you need. If you are starting with nothing then a good quality 802.11n combination router/hub device is the best solution. They are now more or less preconfigured out of the box and only require connecting to the Internet. Access to mobile devices, laptops and desktops can be provided by the Wi-Fi support or for fixed desktop by network switch port and cable. Don't forget to enable the WPA security with a good mixed alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric passphrase. For extra protection limit access to only device MAC addresses you know.  

Troubleshooting my network

There are a number of low level tools that are very easy to use that help network engineers diagnose problems with your network. It pays dividends to get familiar with them for yourself. To use these tools in Windows run the command line interpreter cmd.exe (type in cmd after Start->Run), then simply type the command in.

ping - using a hostname or address it 'bounces' a network packet off the endpoint. Rather like a submarine using sonar, hence the name 'ping'. It outputs status information to confirm whether it has been able to reach the endpoint or not and how long the roundtrip took.

ipconfig - reports all the network information for all of the network adapters on your PC including wireless, cable, MAC address (physical address), IP address, gateway address (router), subnet (class of address), hostnames, connection state etc.

tracert - reports the route through the network that a data packet will take to reach a host. It can help provide indications of why a connection might be slow or not working by indicating where it gets stuck in the network. Like ping it also reports time taken to travel the route.  

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