Home Computer Network :: essays research papers

Have you ever needed to have more than one home computer for you and your family? Do you have two or more computers, but need to copy and/or share files and/or programs between them, but you don’t know how? Do all of your computers need Internet access, but you don’t want to have a phone line installed for each of them? Well, you can do all of this. I know, because this is what I did at my home. After doing research I found that there are several advantages for having your own Home Computer Network. Following, are several reasons to do this in your house. First, by having an in-home computer network, and a file server, you can have a central location for storing all of your information. So, if you need more than one computer to access certain information, such as fonts, financial files, games, etc., you can do this through the network. This also eliminates the need for copying files to floppy diskettes, hand-carrying them to the other computers, and copying the files one-floppy-at-a-time to each, individual computer. This would be a very slow process, compared to a fast network speed. Additionally, if one computer on your network crashes, you can move to another computer and continue your work. So, if you use your network and file server effectively, you can have a high degree of reliability, security, and efficiency. Second, an in-home computer network can allow you to have only one Internet connection while giving Internet access to all computers on your network. This is very important if you only have one phone line. If you were to add an additional phone line for each computer you wanted to be connected to the Internet, well, let’s just say that this would be a costly alternative. By using your file server on your network, as a PROXY server, you can just use one phone line to connect to the Internet. All you have to do is install a small PROXY program that says, â€Å"I am the Internet connection for this network. Everybody aim their Internet browsing at me!† It’s really that simple. By doing this, it fools the other computers on your network into thinking that the file server IS the Internet. In addition to being connected via one phone line, and one computer, your file server can have what is called a â€Å"Firewall.† This eliminates outside intruders from invadin g your network.