Home networking odyssey: The original home network mess

By Mike Azzara

Chapter 1

I'm going to detail our home-computing environment so you can understand the whole hoary mess on my hands. Every modern family of five or more probably has a hoary mess of similar magnitude.

My three kids shared two primary computers:

• An aging Gateway in the basement, which barely passed muster for upgrading to XP many years ago. Specs include a 1.1-GHz AMD Athlon processor, 512 MB RAM, and an 18.6-gigabyte drive that kept filling up and crashing thanks to my daughter's iTunes library. I bought a 320-GB external Western Digital MyBook drive onto which we moved the iTunes library, but which had since mysteriously refused to connect to the Gateway. My daughter was not happy.

  

• An iMac G5 in the dining room, atop an antique Singer sewing machine that doubled as a computer desk. The RAM was upgraded to 2 gigs, and I had nearly filled a 140-GB hard drive making iMovie movies (here are links to Tony's stage debut and my kids' garage band), so I added an external Maxtor OneTouch II 300-gig drive, but was only using it to back up the iMac. The backups were out of date. And, oh yeah, in my tests the previously mentioned MyBook drive had no problem connecting to the iMac via FireWire.

  

In addition, my wife Tonia and I shared two machines in our home office:

• His: An old IBM X40 ThinkPad with an Intel Pentium M 1.2-GHz processor, 1.5 gigs of RAM, a 37-GB hard drive, and a Hewlett-Packard psc2510 Photosmart All-In-One WiFi printer.
• Hers: A Compaq XP machine with a 2.6-GHz Intel Celeron processor, 1 gig of RAM, a 75-GB hard drive, and a Canon i560 inkjet printer.
• Miscellaneous: A 500-gig SimpleTech external USB drive that I carried between the Compaq and ThinkPad to back them up whenever I could. I overbought this drive with future network backup in mind.

Mike's Home Networking Odyssey

1: The original home network mess

2: The great modem swap

3: Of scrimping and crimping

4: The first cut is the deepest

5: Mike's first punch down

6: Wiring the family club

7: Microsoft workgroup voodoo

8: From the frying pan to the freezer

9: The power of perseverance

The Gateway and Compaq were wired directly into an old Linksys BEFSR41 router with a built-in 10/100 switch, along with my Series 3 high-definition TiVo in the living room and a Netgear WGR614 wireless router. (Hint: Don't connect a router to a router, even if you think it's the cheapest way to add WiFi to an existing network. Connecting it was a Herculean task, accomplished by the aforementioned networking master, Strom; undoing it, another goal of mine, has thus far proved impossible.) The iMac was wirelessly linked through the Netgear router, as was a Series 2 TiVo in the master bedroom and the psc2510 printer (which was thus available to the iMac).

Said hoary mess was connected to telecom provider Cablevision's Internet gateway via a Motorola SBV-4200 VoIP cable modem (which also provided the home-office phone line). That cable modem is where my story starts.