Insider Power Techniques for Microsoft Windows XP (Bpg-Other)

Overview

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to:

• Put together the hardware requirements for a network.

• Configure each network computer.

• Set up Internet Connection Sharing.

• Access network resources.

• Connect to a remote computer’s registry.

• Safely share your computer’s resources on the network.

If you have multiple computers in your home or small office, you’ve probably run into one or more of the following problems:

• In many cases, it’s just not economically feasible to supply each computer with its own complete set of peripherals. Printers, for example, are a crucial part of the computing equation—when you need them. If someone needs a printer only a couple of times a week, it’s hard to justify shelling out hundreds of dollars so that a user can have his or her own printer. The problem, then, is how to share a printer (or some other peripheral) among several machines.

• These days, few people work in splendid isolation. Rather, the norm is that colleagues and coworkers share data and work together on the same files. If everyone uses a separate computer, though, how are files shared efficiently?

• Most offices now standardize with particular software packages for word processing, spreadsheets, graphics, and other mainstream applications. Does this mean copies of expensive software programs or suites must be purchased for each machine? As with peripherals, what about the person who uses a program only sporadically?

• Everyone wants to be on the Internet, of course, but paying a subscription for each user seems wasteful. What’s needed is a way to share a single Internet connection.

All of these problems are readily overcome by setting up a small network. Printers and other peripherals can be attached to one machine and used by any other machine on the network; files can be transferred along the cables from one computer to another; an Internet connection may be set up on one machine and the connection shared with other machines on the network; a user can access applications, disk drives, and folders on network computers as though these were part of his or her own computer.

A network can solve many problems, but it can also create a few of its own: you have to set it up and you have to administer it. In large corporate networks, these tasks require specialized knowledge, most of which is well beyond the scope of this book. However, setting up and maintaining a network for a small office or home office is within the grasp of anyone willing to learn a few concepts and techniques. It’s our goal in this chapter to give you the know-how to do just that.