Having problems setting up your Wireless Home Network or simply curious and want to understand what is possible?

A home network allows you to connect your computers, video game consoles, printers and other media devices together so that they can interact with one another in order to share files, resources and an Internet connection.

Things you can do with a home network

Share Resources: Your network gives you the power to share your internet connection and use printers, scanners and other peripherals from any connected computer in the house. You can also share files among all the people who share the network

Connect your media: Making media connections can take many different forms. One of the best things about having a home network is the flexibility—you can stream (a fancier word for "play") your media files through a host of different devices.
A digital multimedia receiver, for example, allows you to view digital photos, movies and high definition programs on your HDTV, and listen to downloaded music on your home theater sound system.

Shared Storage: When you think about it, you’ve got a lot of data—financial records, photos, music, movies, work files and more—and it’s probably spread across your laptop, your desktop, or your kids' computers. You'd be lost without that data, but how can you make sure that it's safe and secure? Believe it or not, a home network can come to the rescue.
An external hard drive is a separate device that you connect to your computer with a USB or Firewire cable. It contains storage space for your files, just like the hard drive inside your PC. When you have file sharing set up on your home network, everyone in your family can transfer data to a set folder on the computer connected to the external drive. Then you just transfer that data onto the drive at a set schedule—once a week should do it.

Communicate with Voip (which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol) is a technology that lets you use your Internet connection to make phone calls and even video chats, rather than your phone lines. It works out much cheaper than using your regular phone line

Integrate a games console: Many of todays video game consoles support either wired or wireless home networking making it possible for you to play games on the internet, stream music or videos and much more.

Streaming Music and Video: Home networking is all about accessing your media, your way, on your schedule:Download movies, music and more, and shuffle them between your computers and hand-held media players with ease.

Stream files from one computer to your television or another computer, and back up your files in one central place.

So what exactly is streaming? Streaming lets you store content on one computer (or on the Internet) but play it seamlessly on another device. Streaming requires an Internet connection and a network that’s fast enough to support streaming and allow for high-quality audio and video.

For this tutorial we will work through setting up a wireless home network to connect the items below

We will need a

1) A broadband connection - To set up a wireless network, you need a broadband or high-speed Internet connection.Two common broadband technologies are Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and cable technology. These require a DSL modem or a cable modem (often provided by your ISP).

2) A wireless modem router - The router converts the signals coming across your Internet connection into a wireless broadcast, sort of like a cordless phone base station. Newer DSL and cable modems come with integrated wireless networking capability and are called modem routers

3) One or more computers with built in wireless networking support or a wireless adaptor – If you have a newer computer, you may already have built-in wireless capabilities. If this is the case, you don’t need a wireless network adapter. Here’s how to check whether your computer has wireless support installed:

Windows 7 and Windows Vista

Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Network and Internet. If you see any of these words listed, “Wireless,” “WLAN,” “Wi-Fi,” “802.11a,” “802.11b,” “802.11g,” or “802.11n,” your computer has wireless capability installed.

Windows XP

1.Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties
2.In the System Properties window, click the Hardware tab.
3.Near the top of this window, click the Device Manager button.
4.In the Device Manager window, there is a list of hardware components which are installed on the computer. Press the Plus sign (+) to the left of the icon to open the Network adapters item in the list. The Network adapters section of the window expands to reveal a list of all network adapters installed on the computer.
5.If you see any of these words in the list of installed network adapters, “Wireless,” “WLAN,” “Wi-Fi,” “802.11a,” “802.11b,” “802.11g,” or “802.11n,” your computer has wireless network support installed.

If your desktop or laptop computer does not have built-in wireless support, you need to purchase a network adapter to wirelessly connect your computer to your wireless router. If you need an adapter for a desktop computer,buy a USB wireless network adapter. If you have a laptop,buy a PC card-based network adapter. Make sure that you have one adapter for every computer on your network.
NOTE:To make setup easy, choose a network adapter made by the same vendor that made your wireless router. For example, if you find a good price on a Linksys router, choose a Linksys network adapter to go with it. To make shopping even easier, buy a bundle, such as those available from Linksys, Actiontec, D-Link, Netgear, Microsoft, and Buffalo. If you have a desktop computer, make sure that you have an available USB port where you can plug in the wireless network adapter. If you don't have any open USB ports,buy a USB hub to add additional ports.

4) Other devices to connect to the network like a games console, printer, tablet, external storage etc.

In this tutorial we will assume that the router is brand new and needs to be configured before you can use it to connect to the internet.

The following settings are needed to configure the router.

Broadband username

Broadband Password

Authentication type Normally PPPoA

If you received your router from your ISP then these settings are most likely already pre-installed for you. If not, you should find them in the welcome material that you received.

We will be using the Netgear DG834G v3

We start by connecting the router to the telephone master socket using the grey adsl cable via a microfilter.

It is important that a microfilter is used as it makes sure that the telephone does not interfere with the broadband signal. Every extension socket in your property should have a microfilter connected to it including the one that SKY television connects to. See the ADSL tutorial for more information.

Next connect the power supply and switch the router on.

The lights on the router will flash. After a couple of minutes they should settle down and you will see that the router is getting a broadband signal.

Finally, connect the yellow Ethernet cable to one of the LAN ports on the router and the Ethernet port on your PC. You should see the corresponding number on the front of the router light up.

We now need to enter the ISP specific information into the router.

We do this by accessing the router configuration.

Open your favourite internet browser (IE/Chrome/Firefox/Safari)

You should see the message that you are unable to access the webpage. Although we are getting a broadband signal we are not authenticating with the network yet because we haven’t entered our username and password.

To do this we need to access the configuration page of the router.
The process is slightly different depending of the brand of router being used.

For the the netgear DG834Gv3 we type 192.168.0.1 into the browser address bar.

The address for other routers can be found in the table below.

We are asked to enter a username and password. This is not the username and password for our internet connection but for the router

For the netgear it is

Username: admin
Password: password

On pressing Login we are presented with the router configuration page. If not, press basic settings on the left hand side

We have a username and password for our connection so we answer yes to does your Internet connection require a login

Encapsulation is PPPoA

Enter your username where it says Login ie myusername@isp.net

Enter the password where it says password ie password 1234

Leave everything else as it is and click apply at the bottom

If we now open a new browser we should find that we are connected to the internet

At the moment we are connecting to the internet through a wired Ethernet connection. If we were to remove the yellow ethernet cable at this point we would lose our internet connection.

To set up the wireless connection we must first configure the router and then configure our computer to connect to it.

Let's start by configuring the router

Access the router configuration settings by opening a browser and entering 192.168.0.1 into the address bar and pressing enter.

Enter admin for the username and password for the password and press Login.

Once inside the router configuration page, press the wireless link on the left hand side

The first thing we have to do is give the wireless network a name.

I’ll use HomeHelpHub but you can use anything you want.

I’ll leave region, channel and mode as they are for now.

Make sure that there is a tick next to
- Enable wireless access point and allow broadcast name (SSID)

We need to secure our network so only people that know the password can use it.

Click on WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key).

You are then asked to enter a password between 8 and 63 characters.

Whatever you choose make sure you write it down as we will need it again when we configure the computer. The password can be a mixture of upper and lower case letters and numbers.

Once you have finished click apply.

That’s it. You have now set up a secure wireless network and we can start connecting our devices to it.

If you have been working your way through this tutorial you will now have a wireless network configured with a wireless name (SSID) and wireless password.

Let's start by connecting our main computer to the network.

The process to connect to a wireless network is slightly different depending on what operating system you are using.

The first thing to do is make sure that the wireless on your computer is switched on. If you are not sure how to do this check out the FAQ’s at Wireless Internet Queries

Select your operating system from the list below and then follow the steps detailed to connect wirelessly

Adding other devices to your network

 

• 1) Verify Wi-Fi is enabled and that you are connected to a Wi-Fi network.
  2) Tap Settings > Wi-Fi. If Wi-Fi is off, turn it on by tapping the on/off icon.
  3) Available Wi-Fi networks appears under "Choose a Network..."
  4) Locate and tap the Wi-Fi network you want to join
  5) Enter password
  6) Check connection by using Safari to open a web page.

 

• The following instructions detail how to connect the Nintendo Wii to the wireless network. For instructions on how to connect other games consoles visit HomeHelpHub Gaming Queries

   

  1) Turn on your Wii, wireless router and your television.
  2) Select the round Wii button in the bottom-left of the screen.
  3) Select Wii Settings.
  4) Select the right arrow to view more options.
  5) Select Internet.
  6) Select Connection Settings.
  7) Select Connection 1, or any of the available connection slots.
  8) Select Wireless Connection.
  9) Select Search for an Access Point.
  10) Wait for the search to complete and click OK when prompted.
  11) Select your network.
  12) Select the textbox, enter the wireless network password and select OK.
  13) Select OK again.
  14) To save the settings, select OK.
  15) To test the connection, select OK.
  

After successfully completing the previous steps we should find that we have 2 laptops's, an iPhone, a printer and a Wii Games console connected wirelessly and an external hard drive connected via USB to our main laptop.

As we have 2 laptops connected to the same wireless network we are now able to give permission for the 2nd laptop to access folders on the first laptop.

The process is slightly different depending on the operating system of the computer being used

Select your operating system below to find out how

 

• Sharing resources is configured from the computer that contains the files and folders you want to share. You can share an entire drive so that all the files and folders on that drive become available to the other computers, or you can share just specific folders.

   

  To share a file, folder or drive using Windows XP:

  1. Enable file sharing on your computer if you haven't already done so by running the Network Setup Wizard. Click Start, click Control Panel, click Network and Internet Connections, click Network Setup Wizard. You only need to do this once on your computer. Note: You must have administrative privileges on your computer to share files and folders in Windows XP.
  

  2. Open My Computer.
  

  3. Browse to the folder that contains the files that you want to make available to other computers, and then select it.
  

  4. On the File menu, click Sharing and Security.
  

  5. Click Share this Folder on the Network tab. By default, the folder is made available to all of the other computers on your network, and everyone has read-only access. To give everyone read-write access, select Allow Network Users to Change My Files.

   

 

• The easiest way to share files on your network is to place them in the Public folder. Any file or folder you put in the Public folder is automatically shared with the people connected to your network.

   

  To turn on Public folder sharing, follow these steps:

  1) Open Network and Sharing Center by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Network and Internet, and then clicking Network and Sharing Center.
  

  2) Click the arrow button next to Public folder sharing, and then click one of the following options:

  - Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can open files

  - Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can open, change, and create files

  - Turn off sharing (people logged on to this computer can still access this folder)

  3) Click Apply.

  You will need to repeat the steps above on each computer that you want to share files from.

  To share your files, save them or copy them to the Public folder on your computer.

  There is one Public folder on each computer. Every person with a user account on the computer shares this folder.

   

  To open the Public folder:

  Open Documents by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Documents.

  In the Navigation pane, under Favorite Links, click Public.

 

• The easiest way to share files on your network is to place them in the Public folder. Any file or folder you put in the Public folder is automatically shared with the people connected to your network.

  To turn on Public folder sharing, follow these steps:

  1) Open Advanced sharing settings by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type network, click Network and Sharing Center, and then, in the left pane, click Change advanced sharing settings.

  2) Click the chevron to expand your current network profile.

  Under Public folder sharing, select one of the following options:

  - Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can read and write files in the Public folders

  - Turn off Public folder sharing (people logged on to this computer can still access these folders)

  3) Click Save changes. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

  You will need to repeat the steps above on each computer that you want to share files from.

  To share your files, save them or copy them to the Public folder on your computer.

  There is one Public folder on each computer. Every person with a user account on the computer shares this folder.

   

  To open the Public folder:

  Open Documents by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Documents.

  In the Navigation pane, under Favorite Links, click Public.