Complete guide to home networking

• Article 37 of 53
• iCreate, August 2005
• View a PDF of the original article ~ 3.1MB

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One final point about the AirPort base station range: they don’t have ADSL modems built in. If you get your Internet connection via dial-up or by cable, that’s not a problem. Cable users can simply connect their base stations to their cable modem or set-top box using an Ethernet cable and away they go. Nice and Apple easy, huh? But if you get your connection via regular phone lines, as the vast majority of UK broadband users do, you’ll also need an ADSL modem. So, like them, you might want to think twice about buying an AirPort base station and look at one of the third-party wireless routers available that have ADSL modems built in. They’re cheaper, do more and can actually give you an Internet connection, but they’re not as user-friendly. They also don’t tend to offer the more secure WPA encryption for wireless networking, unlike Apple’s range. It’s your choice, but it’s no coincidence that the number of Apple wireless routers used by members of the iCreate team to connect to the Internet is zero.

NETWORKING OTHER DEVICES
With your computers all connected up to your network and your Internet connection shared among them, you might want to start looking at the other devices you can connect directly to the network. We’ve already mentioned how you can share printers, hard drives, etc via OS X, but there are various devices on the market now that have their own built-in networking capabilities. Mid-range and high-end printers almost all have Ethernet built in, while some even have wireless capabilities. There are also various file servers and hard drives, such as the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini, which can plug directly into the network and share their data without the need for a Mac. High-end scanners, typically those from Umax, also have network capabilities.

Most of us don’t have peripherals that pricey or that came with those capabilities, but it’s still possible in some cases to add the necessary to them. There are a variety of wireless and wired printer servers, including the AirPort base station range, that can connect to USB printers and then share them on the network. These are usually at least £80 and present the printers to you as Windows printers, so if you’re really toying with the idea for a home network, we’d recommend buying an AirPort Express instead – they’re the same price, Mac-oriented and can do a whole lot more. For an office network, they’re probably a bit more exciting than most IT managers like, but they’re still relevant and PCs can print to them with only a little bit of effort.

Sharing a scanner over a network is easy, provided it works with Image Capture (so that’s basically Epson scanners then). Simply open up Image Capture, go into its preferences and click “Share my devices”: this will also share any other Image Capture-compatible devices such as webcams, digital cameras and so on. Clicking on “Look for shared devices” at the same time will enable you to use scanners, etc shared by other Macs with Image Capture. If your scanner doesn’t work with Image Capture, that’s basically it then, since most of the USB scanner servers available, of which there are but a handful, only work with PCs and not very well at that.

If you’re keen on networked peripherals, it might well be worth looking into multi-function devices that build fax machine, scanner and printer into a single unit. These invariably have networking capabilities and can save their scanned output onto file servers. The printer will be visible on the network and you’ll get a fax machine as well. Brilliant.

Pushing the envelope a little is the networked fax. True, you can already fax from OS X and share that faxing capability with any other OS X 10.3 or 10.4 user over the network. But the same principles of workload for the poor Mac apply. Plus OS X’s faxing software can be a little flaky at time. A networked fax server can do a whole load of things more and connect to more than one phone line, so if you do a lot of faxing and everyone else does, a network fax is worth looking at, even if it is a relatively expensive purchase. You might get lucky and find your multi-function fax/scanner/printer offers network faxing capabilities as well. Be sure to get one that works with Macs though.

Lastly, there’s a new set of consumer products that are network-enabled and that work with Macs. We’ve highlighted some of the best in the “Hot networking” sidebar.

INTERNET EVERYWHERE
Once you’ve built this stonkingly good network, as soon as you leave home or the office, it’s all absolutely useless to you. It’s there, you’re not. Fortunately, there are ways to get Internet access almost everywhere now.

WiFi hotspots are becoming ubiquitous. These are open wireless networks that you can join, usually for a price but sometimes for free, provided you have an AirPort or AirPort Extreme card in your laptop. When in the presence of a hotspot, your Mac will helpfully point out its presence and ask if you want to join it. Say yes, and you’ll be able to join the network. At the paid-for hotspots, open up Safari or any other web browser and you’ll be redirected to a page where you can enter credit card details to pay for your time on the web.

The trick is finding these hotspots. There are various Internet sites, such as Jiwire (www.jiwire.com), that list WiFi hotspots, but that’s no use unless you have Internet access already. There are also pocket WiFi locators, available from firms such as Kensington, that will alert you when they locate WiFi networks. This is much better than walking around in a strange city with your laptop open, hoping to find a signal.

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