Networking? No need to drill

By Glenn Fleishman
Special to The Seattle Times

Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com

If you have more than two computers in your home and haven't hooked them up, surely you must be longing to. Nature abhors a vacuum, and computers adore a network.

The difficulties begin only when your computers span more than a few feet winding up across rooms or in different rooms of a house. You might have contemplated pulling out a long drill bit and running network wiring through your walls, or just littering the floors with cables.

Many technologically advanced new homes come with a variety of network and television cable already run through the walls and terminated in connection boxes in a basement or utility room.

We owners and renters of older homes lack that luxury, and we know that once you open a wall to run some cable through it, a process gets started that might be tough to finish.

Instead of creating new wounds in the wall, consider one of three established home networking systems — they're not cutting edge and they're not complex. None of the three requires any new wiring or cabling, although you will have to read a manual or two, and might need to lean on a more technical friend or family member for the initial setup.

Wireless options

Wired networks send data speeding over copper cables using a standard known as Ethernet that can pass data at 10 or 100 megabits per second (Mbps), the equivalent of sending a high-quality digital photo every second or three across.

The most popular alternative to Ethernet, especially in the home, is Wi-Fi ("wireless fidelity") which has most of Ethernet's advantages of simplicity but uses radio waves instead of copper wires.

Wi-Fi has been available for four years, and more than 2 million households employ it, according to a recent study. The price has dropped to about $75 to $250 for a central receiver, usually called a wireless gateway; the price varies based on features.

Each computer you add to a Wi-Fi network requires a $50 to $100 adapter, although with rebates, prices can be even lower for plug-in cards. Many laptops now include Wi-Fi as a standard feature, or as a low-cost option at the time of purchaser.

Wi-Fi uses radio waves to communicate at speeds up to 11 Mbps with the original flavor (called "802.11b"), or up to 54 Mbps with a new flavor just hitting the market ("802.11g"). The old and new equipment works together just fine, but avoid 802.11a, which uses different radio frequencies, and isn't generally found in the home.

Wi-Fi works through walls, but it can't transmit very far. The specification says 150 feet in any direction from the wireless gateway, but through walls, distances are reduced to anywhere from 10 to 50 feet.

Before investing in a system, you might want to borrow equipment from a friend or colleague: certain wall materials, such as brick, masonry, or metal studs, can prevent Wi-Fi signals from passing through as well or at all. With most homes that have a lathe-and-plaster or Sheetrock wall covering, the radio waves should penetrate just fine.

As an added bonus with Wi-Fi, you can often place the central hub so that there's enough signal strength to reach outside a home. Backyard networking is a great change of pace. (You can also roam around town and use Wi-Fi to connect for free or a fee at coffee shops, parks and random outdoor locations.)

The downside of these penetrating radio waves is that you need a little configuration if you want to keep neighbors with Wi-Fi adapters from using your network. Newer systems that use a security system called WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) are the simplest to configure.

If you want to share your network, however, read up at the Seattle Wireless site for more on community networking (www.seattlewireless.net).

What you need: One central Wi-Fi hub (also called a wireless gateway) that connects to a modem, includes an internal modem, or hooks up to a DSL or cable modem ($100 to $250, depending on options). One Wi-Fi network card for each computer: All newer Macs use AirPort or AirPort Extreme cards from Apple, while PCs can use equipment from dozens of manufacturers, like Linksys or Microsoft ($35 to $100). All Wi-Fi equipment is certified to work with each other, as long as the Wi-Fi seal is on the box.

Electrical Wiring

What network does every home already have? An electrical network. The power system in most homes is interconnected, running back to a central junction box with outlets in every room.

Clever engineers realized that with an electrical network already in place, they could overlay data signals on top of the power without disrupting the juice, and thus avoid any requirement for new wiring.

The result is the HomePlug system, which is available under many different brand names, like Siemens SpeedStream Powerline. It operates at slow wired Ethernet speeds, or about 14 Mbps.

HomePlug is the simplest way to connect desktop computers, as you already know they're near an outlet. Each computer uses a HomePlug adapter, which has a port to attach the computer, and a power plug.

Typically, an Ethernet cable runs from the HomePlug adapter to your computer. For computers without built-in Ethernet, HomePlug offers USB (Universal Serial Bus) adapters.

Some experts have a slight concern that signals could leak into adjacent homes, and that neighbors could, with similar equipment, tap into your network. HomePlug fortunately offers a basic but robust security system that requires just a simple short password which is entered identically for each computer's adapter.

Although it's unlikely, some homes might have one or more circuits in the house that are isolated grounds; these are more typically found in offices. These circuits are often identified by an orange outlet, and are designed for computer systems to reduce voltage fluctuations and other power problems: each outlet is separately wired back to the circuit box. Isolated grounds can't work with HomePlug because their signals aren't sufficiently mingled with other circuits.

HomePlug now offers a wireless Wi-Fi option, too: one of the adapters you plug in can be a wireless gateway to extend a network beyond the electrical limits or to allow roaming by laptops or handhelds.

What you need: One HomePlug adapter for each computer or cable/DSL modem (about $50).

Phone Wiring

While practically all homes have electrical outlets, a smaller but still large subset have phone extensions in many rooms. A third system takes advantage of this prewired condition to send data over the same wires used for telephone calls and even a DSL connection — at the same time. You can even use phone lines that aren't connected up to a dial tone as long as they're connected to each other.

The HomePNA system plugs into ordinary phone wires but requires a central hub. The hub handles coordinating the signals from different devices, and can also plug into a broadband cable or DSL modem while protecting your network from snoopers.

Adapters come in card versions for desktops and laptops (PCI and PC cards, respectively), as well as with adapters for Ethernet and USB.

Unlike a shared DSL line from the phone company, HomePNA doesn't need any special filters to be placed on phone lines.

What you need: A central hub ($75 to $150); each computer needs an adapter ($25 to $50).

Glenn Fleishman writes about technology for The Seattle Times and other publications. gfleishman@seattletimes.com.

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