home network kits - Buyers Guide

Home Office Computing, April, 2001 by Amee Abel

Five ways to link up and share data throughout your home.

IF YOU ARE IN THE MARKET FOR A NEW computer, chances are a new home network kit is on the horizon, too. These all-in-one solutions link your new PC to your older system (or even to the computers in your kids' rooms) and allow you to share files and an Internet connection throughout your home and home office.

Home network installers are faced with three major hurdles: making the hardware connection, finding drivers that work with their operating system, and installing network software. With the advent of USB ports and PC Card slots, the job of attaching network interface cards (NICs) can be as simple as plugging in a cable. Older computer systems without USB ports, however, will require the installation of an internal PCI-bus expansion card.

Dealing with an OS is a bit of a different matter. Recent versions of both MacOS and Windows include support for Internet connection sharing and networking. When you select a network, make sure it supports for the operating systems used on all the PCs you intend to link.

In the end, the software that configures the settings and lets the PCs "see" each other can make or break your network. The earliest network kits came with large manuals filled with instructions for configuring the networks manually. We're happy to report that many products now have robust and effective setup software.

We tested five popular kits. Three are wireless (Apple's AirPort, SOHOware's CableFREE, and Proxim's Symphony), one uses phone lines (Intel's AnyPoint), and one employs Ethernet (Linksys' EtherFast). We liked the mobility of the wireless products, but think that home office workers are better served by wired solutions, which provide a balance of ease, price, and power. Most of these vendors offer a variety of solutions, so your best bet is to pick the technology you like then a brand.

AirPort

AirPort is a fast (11Mbps) wireless network that uses internal network interface cards. Once installed, the AirPort cards and requisite software Let any Macs that come within range of each other create a network.

While we may not Love opening our computers, the simplicity of using an AirPort network more than makes up for the cost of screwdrivers. We built our network around an iMac DV and a G3PowerBook, both running OS 9. Once the hardware was in, we ran the AirPort Setup Assistant on each computer, answered about four easy questions, and the network was done.

If you have a computer plugged into the Internet, that computer can serve as the AirPort Base Station, serving Internet requests to the rest of the computers on the network. In offices where none of the computers dwell near a phone jack (or the cable/modem bridge for your broadband Internet feed), you can add a flying-saucer-shaped Base Station ($299) to broadcast Internet access to all computers on the network. The Base Station includes a 56Kbps modem and an Ethernet jack, so it's ready for whatever way you receive the Internet, even broadband.

In practice, the AirPort network worked well for us, installed with a base station upstairs, an iMac in the cellar, and a PowerBook wandering the household. Either computer could dial up the Internet, and transfer rates for file sharing were excellent. In fact, the only shortcoming in this network was the job of installing the AirPort card. In short, if you use Macs, you should use the AirPort.

A Best wireless solution available

B You have to bust into your Mac

AnyPoint Home Network

Intel's AnyPoint Home Network Lived up to its reputation for easy installation and impeccable documentation. Our network used the Home Phoneline 2.0 standard that offers a 10Mbps performance across everyday phone Lines without interrupting normal telephone functions.

We installed the network between a Dell XPS 1000B 1GHz Pentium III PC and an older IBM 400MHz Pentium II Aptiva using the provided AnyPoint USB NIC and an AnyPoint PCI NIC, respectively. USB installation on the Dell was a simple matter of plugging the plastic AnyPoint obelisk into its power supply, connecting the phone and USB cables, and inserting a CD-ROM into the drive. Hardware drivers, network software, and Internet connection software were all flawlessly installed with the click of the mouse. With the Dell enabled as the Internet server, we were ready to begin installation of the second machine. For the IBM, we needed to open the system and insert an expansion card into an available motherboard PCI slot, a time-consuming but simple task. Software installation was straightforward.

We encountered one setback when we opened the Internet browser on our IBM--the network came back with a gripe message that the Aptiva was using an older version of the AnyPoint network software than the Dell. The problem was quickly set straight using the on-disk software help. After that, surfing the Web or collecting e-mail from either computer worked fine.

Printing to the shared printer is as straightforward as printing to a computer directly connected--select the printer and click on Print. When we wanted to take a break from number-crunching, multiplayer gaming worked well, too. We never felt the 10Mbps network bogged us down during intense Total Annihilation action.