Idiots’ guide to networking
- Article 3 of 53
- iCreate, May 2004
Find out how to get all of your Macs talking to each other in perfect harmony with our guide to networking Macs and Windows PCs, creating AirPort networks and wiring broadband to every room in your house. We'll show you what kit you need, how to connect it all and how to go wireless.
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Networking is one of those words with a double meaning. To people with names like Jonnty and Torquil, it’s another way of saying “a trip to the pub”. But for the Mac world, it’s getting two computers to talk to each other.
Why would anyone outside an office want to network computers their computers together? Well, it might be for something simple like sharing pictures from a digital camera or listening to songs from someone else’s music library. Perhaps you’d like to avoid having to constantly plug and unplug modems and printers every time someone else wants to use the Internet or print a document? Maybe you’re bored of waiting for little junior to finish annihilating 15-year-old online gamers from Korea in Unreal Tournament before you can get your email? Or is the simple reassurance that you can back up your files onto another machine before you take your laptop out on the road enough to make you look closely at the advantages of a home network.
Setting up home networks used to be the preserve, in many people’s eyes, of real-ale drinkers, professional beard-growers and those who can name every Star Trek episode in both chronological and alphabetical order. Indeed, it was practically impossible under Mac OS 9 to have an Internet connection and connect to a network at the same time without extra hardware. Fortunately, OS X has made it as easy as a button click to do almost everything networking-related so settle back as we show you how to save time, money and frustration by simple home networking.
The simplest network of all is between two computers that have no Internet access. Typically, you might get this kind of set up when two people with laptops meet and want to exchange pictures, documents and other files. Fortunately, it’s as easy to set up with a Mac as describe. All you need to do to set up a network between the two computers is to buy yourself an “Ethernet” cable: it’ll cost between £5 and £10 if you shop around and you can even get them from Dixons; make sure they’re “CAT 5” quality though. Then plug the cable into the Ethernet ports of both computers – those are the ones with “<…>” written next to them.
And that should be it, in theory. Provided you have library sharing and browsing switched on in iTunes and iPhoto, your computers should now be able to see each others’ music and photos and let you access them. If you want to share more than that, you can go to the Sharing preference panel in Systems Preferences and click on Personal File Sharing. Then anyone can access the Public folder in your Home directory (or anyone else’s Home directory) and copy files from it; if they want to, they can upload files into the Drop Box in the Public folder.
Of course, that is just the theory. A couple of things can cause you problems. Firstly, older Macs do not have “auto sensing” Ethernet ports and so you’ll need a special kind of Ethernet cable called a “crossover” cable to connect them. Similarly, PCs rarely have auto-sensing ports. You’ll also need to do a few more things (see Walkthrough 2) to share your files with Windows users, although iTunes for Windows can see iTunes for Mac libraries without any fiddling. Lastly, OS 9 users will make your life difficult: they’ll need to ensure that both AppleTalk and TCP/IP are configured to use their Built-In Ethernet card, and you’ll need to enable AppleTalk over your Ethernet connection using the Network system preferences (although OS X 10.3.3 does that by default now).
Using AirPort or AirPort Extreme is equally easy if your Macs have the appropriate cards installed (see Boxout Two). It is even easier if you want to connect more than two Macs together, since most Macs only have one Ethernet port and therefore can only fit in one cable; yet any number of Macs can connect together wirelessly.
Ethernet connections are faster than wireless connections, however, so bearing with it can be worth the effort. To connect more than two Macs together, you’ll need an Ethernet “hub” or “switch” that you can connect all your cables to. It will then merrily pass all the traffic around between the Macs so they all remain in contact with one another. Hubs generally come with 4, 8, 16 and 32 ports (with one extra, sometimes, to connect them to other hubs) and can cost as little as £20, so they’re still cheaper than equipping a group of Macs that don’t have AirPort/AirPort Extreme cards.
The next step beyond this closed network is opening up Internet access and sharing it with the computers on the network. Unfortunately, this is where you have to start planning a bit. How many computers are going to have access to the Internet? Is my dial-up connection going to provide enough bandwidth for three computers? Do I want to have one computer share its connection or get a piece of dedicated hardware instead?
Mac OS X makes it very easy to share an Internet connection. Go into the Sharing preference panel in Systems Preferences, click on the tab marked Internet, then decide which connection you’re going to share. It’s no use sharing your Ethernet connection over your Internal Modem connection, but the other way round will enable you to share a dial-up connection with an Ethernet-based home network, so pick correctly. Equally, if you set your Mac up as a software base station, you can share your dial-up Internet connection with a wireless home network, a far cheaper and more sensible alternative than the wacky idea of the AirPort Extreme Base Station that comes with a dial-up modem.
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