Logo Rob Buckley – Freelance Journalist and Editor

Complete guide to home networking

Complete guide to home networking

Macs have always been the easiest computers to network, so isn't it time you got down with the digital hub and got your devices talking to each other? Rob Buckley shows you how to do it with and without cables

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In both cases, you’ll need some way of connecting to the Internet. Since you’re not Pipex and you don’t have Internet trunking cable clamped onto the side of your home, you’ll need both an Internet Service Provider and a modem to contact that ISP, whether you’re using dial-up or broadband. Your ISP may even provide the modem if you’re unlucky…

The modem is key here. If you have a USB modem, you’ll need to plug that into a Mac. Your Mac can then connect to the Internet. Using the Internet Sharing powers of OS X (see our ‘Walkthrough – Sharing an Internet Connection’ for details of how to do this’), your Mac can then let other Macs access the Internet by acting as a router for all the information.

This means several things: one, it saves you some cash, since you won’t need a separate router; two, it means that Mac will always have to be on when you want to access the Internet on any of the other Macs; three, it means your Mac is in danger of slowing to a crawl when lots of computers are trying to use the Internet at the same time. This latter problem isn’t helped by the skanky, under-powered USB modems that some ISPs give their customers; frequently, these modems will rely on their host computers to do a lot of the calculating work for them, which slows the host down.

So if you can afford it, invest in a separate router with a built-in ADSL modem. This needn’t be expensive. A four-socket Belkin router with modem comes in at a little over £30 and you’ll save that much money in electricity alone within a couple of years.

Since these routers work via Ethernet rather than USB, you’ll also be spared the constant arguments Mac users have with ISPs over why their modems don’t work with Macs. All Ethernet routers will work with Macs. End of story. Except when they only have Windows-based configuration software, that is, so look for “web interface” or “web configuration” on the box, just to be sure.

GOING WIRELESS
Once you start looking at wireless networking and shared Internet connections, some kind of router starts to become necessary. Yes, you can do the same trick with the Internet Sharing pane in OS X as with wired networking. But you get the same slowdown and unreliability – and then some.

So most people invest in some kind of wireless-enabled router (aka base station or wireless access point). Apple makes two: the AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBS for brevity) and the AirPort Express. The AEBS can handle dozens of wireless computers, all trying to access the Internet at the same time. You can plug a USB printer into its USB port and have that shared wirelessly: you won’t have to have it plugged into a Mac and have that running all the time to be able to print. You can also extend your network using an external antenna or using the wireless distribution system (WDS). The latter requires another AEBS or AirPort Express – or more than one if you have a very large set-up.

The AirPort Express is no shirk either. It can cope with a dozen or so wireless clients and while it only has one Ethernet port and no modem, unlike the AEBS, it does have the extra ability to play music using ‘AirTunes’, which is a way for iTunes to stream its music to a Hi-Fi connected to an AirPort Express.

Both the AEBS and AirPort Express can use standard old AirPort networking (802.11b or WiFi to everyone except Apple), AirPort Extreme (802.11g) or a mixture of the both. AirPort’s older, slower and more prone to interference from mobile phones, microwaves, pieces of furniture, human beings, etc so Extreme is definitely a step up, although both pale in comparison to Ethernet.

If you’re thinking about wireless, you’ll need to take into account that objects and walls may reduce the range of your base station and that radio waves find it harder to go round corners than wires do. The maximum theoretical range for wireless is about 200 metres: you will never, ever achieve this.

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