What type of LAN do you Need?
A Network is simply a number of electronic devices which are connected in such a way that data is able to be transferred between them. By devices I could mean computers (PC's, Apple Mac's, Amiga's, PDA's) or printers, scanners, modems, etc.
In this page I will refer mainly to computers instead of devices.Oh and by the way, I'm primarily a PC man so when I say computer I'm usually thinking of a PC.Please ask in the forum if you have another system and are not sure about something!
The First Question you need to ask Yourself is 'Do I Want Wires, no Wires or a Combination of Wires and no Wires?'
The pros and cons of a wired/wireless network are:
Wires |
Wireless |
|
| Installation and Management | If you have computers in several rooms you will have to drill holes through walls - often into the attic and down again is the best option | Nothing to install or manage - however it should be noted that thick walls, trees, etc. will have an impact on the range of the wireless connection. Not a great issue though. |
| Tidyness | Wires are a pain to keep tidy | Nothing to keep tidy! |
| Reliability | Wires can be pulled, tampled on, chewed by cats, rodents(!), etc. | Nothing to go wrong |
| Portability | None/very limited | Take your computer (e.g. laptop, tablet or PDA) anywhere around your house/office/garden - or even the pub over the road |
| Speed | 100Mb/sec is the current de-facto for home/office usage and 100Mb/sec or 1GB/sec for servers. Although up to 10GB/sec is now available | 10Mb/sec is the most common. D-Link and a few other companies now do 22Mb/sec (which is slightly faster, but not true 22Mb/sec). 'Standards' are out that go faster than this (e.g. 53Mb/sec but this is not yet fully standardised and people are being warned not to move over to the 802.11g standard just yet... |
| Cost | Quite cheap | Now quite cheap now that the take up of it is booming - a couple of years ago this was very expensive |
| Security | Totally secure if your LAN is not connected to the Internet or other external source (i.e. it is a 'closed system') as someone would have to physically connect their computer to it in order to connect to anything | If not configured for security someone could be sitting outside your house/office with a laptop and could log onto your network. Secure once set up correctly:
|
Note: It is perfectly okay to have some devices connected by wires (e.g. some PCs) and others (e.g. laptops) connected by a wireless connection - this is what I have in my house. This is the best option for speed and portability.
The Second Question you need to ask Yourself is 'How Many Computers do I want to Connect?'
Number of Computers/Devices |
My Recommendation |
2 |
Two 100 Base-T LAN cards with a crossover cable to connect them, or two 802.11b 22Mb/sec wLAN cards and no wLAN access point |
3 or more |
100 Base-T cards or two 802.11b 22Mb/sec wLAN cards for each computer and a switched hub |