Chain of tools - starter kits for installing home office local area networks - includes related article comparing Artisoft's LANtastic and Novell's NetWare Lite - Communications

Home Office Computing, April, 1993 by Tom Rugg

Starter Kits Make It Easy and Inexpensive to Install a Small-Office Network

Just three or four years ago, the idea of installing a local-area network (LAN) in your home office was ridiculous. After all, you had only one, or maybe two, computers, and the popular networks were expensive and complicated. How could you possibly justify spending $I,O00 or more per computer to connect them, not to mention all the time and trouble to figure out how?

Networks have changed. Now, for about $200 per computer, you can connect your IBM-compatible computers for high-speed sharing of hard-disk drives, printers, CD-ROM drives, and application software. Installation and usage are a little harder than falling off a log, but nowhere near as tricky as before. You don't have to be a network expert to make it work.

STARTER KITS

To connect computers, you generally install LAN cards in each computer and connect them with cables. (There are some exceptions, covered shortly.) The easiest way to set up a network is to buy a complete starter kit that includes cards, cables, and software. The two biggest names in small-LAN software, called network operating systems, are LANtastic (Artisoft) and NetWare Lite (Novell). Artisoft sells starter kits with its own hardware cards and cables and the LANtastic software. Novell does not bundle hardware and software together, but other companies bundle LAN cards with Novell's NetWare Lite.

Street prices for these kits are under $500 for the first two computers. If you have more than two computers, you'll need an extra LAN card and cable for each additional one. You might want to get your feet wet by connecting only two computers, buying the hardware to connect the others later.

ETHERNET CARDS

The cards in the starter kits are thin Ethernet (a network standard developed by Xerox, Digital, and Intel) cards. Thin refers to the thin coaxial cable that connects the computers. (An earlier standard used thicker cable and is now called, not surprisingly, thick Ethernet.)

If you want to connect more than two computers, or if you wish to buy the hardware separately, your best bet is to buy cards that are compatible with the Novell NEIOO0, NE2000, or NE2100 specifications. The NE2000 is usually the best choice if your computer has an 80286 or higher processor. To save money, you can use NEIOO0 cards in a 286 or higher computer, but you won't be able to transfer data between the processor and the card quite as fast. The NE2100 is for the IBM PS/2 Micro Channel bus. Nearly every network operating system has driver software that supports these Novell cards. Ask the dealer for cables and connectors to complete your Ethernet network.

INSTALLATION

You install LAN cards as you would any other card, except you might have to set jumpers to specify which interrupts or address ranges to use. (Artisoft is introducing "jumperless" adapters, called Node Runners.) The card's documentation should explain your choices and possible system conflicts.

The biggest problem you face is figuring out how to route the cables between your computers. If your computers aren't all in the same room, you might need professional help routing cables along floorboards or through walls. Be sure the cables are protected from foot traffic and rolling desk chairs.

Once you have the LAN cards and cables installed, you install the LAN software on each computer. You can make any computer a server, which makes its hard-disk drive and printer available for other computers to use, or a workstation, which uses a server's disk and primer but doesn't offer its own to others.

WIRELESS AND CARDLESS LANS

While almost all LANs use LAN cards and cables to connect computers, there are exceptions. For example, a wireless LAN does not use cables, although it does use a LAN card. A wireless LAN uses either radio signals or infrared signals to transmit data between computers. If you want to avoid the problems of running cables between awkwardly located computers, wireless LANs sound like a nice solution. However, they are much more expensive and transmit data more slowly than cabled LAN cards.

A zero-slot LAN, such as LANtastic Z ($125; Artisoft), uses a cable, connecting either serial or parallel ports on your computer. As long as you have only two IBM-compatible computers, each has a spare parallel or serial port (you can't connect a serial to a parallel port), and you don't need to access the other computer's files at faster-than-floppy-disk speed, you're all set. Most experts don't consider this connection method to be a real LAN because it isn't fast enough and doesn't use LAN cards. However, LANtastic Z lets the two computers do everything a "real" LANtastic LAN can do, only more slowly. The virtue of such a zero-slot LAN is that you can connect and disconnect it quickly, should you, say, want to connect a notebook to your desktop to transfer a few files then detach it for travel.

Another zero-slot LAN is SwiftLAN ($399; Moses Computers), which uses adapters to connect the parallel ports (not serial ports) on two computers with standard telephone wire, and is much faster than LANtastic Z. (See review of MosesALL!, a full-fledged LAN from Moses Computers, in the Reviews section.) And Coactive Computing Corporation is expected to announce a series of products that will connect Macintosh and IBM-compatible computers in a network. Clearly, the field of products for small-office LANs is expanding rapidly.