In a previous article, I discussed why you might find it beneficial to share a single Internet connection among multiple users in your home or office. This article will build upon that and describe methods by which this Internet connection sharing can be achieved.
In my previous article, I mentioned that there are a number of choices you have when it comes to Internet connection methods. For the purpose of this article, ' broadband ' will generically includes all access members except for dial-up.
After you have researched you high speed Internet connection options, price and availability, I will make the assumption that you have received the hardware and installation of that service has been completed either by the provider or you have installed the connection yourself.The connection has been tested and operation has been verified.
You have a choice of two ways to share this high speed Internet connection among the users of your home network:
Internet Connection Sharing-This is a software option. Windows and Mac OSx operating systems both provide for and facilitate Internet connection sharing. This technique works by having a single computer connected to the Internet broadband connection directly. The operating system then acts like a network traffic controller allowing connection to this computer from multiple users on the network. While certainly not the only drawback, the biggest disadvantage of creating a network of this design is that the main computer (the one connected to the broadband connection) must always remain powered onorder for any other users to access the Internet. Also, this connection method requires that this main computer have two Ethernet network adapter cards installed-one for the broadband connection, the other to the other computers on the network. If you want to have more than one other connection, you will need to have a network switch or other network access point.
Router-In this configuration, it is hardware configured and controlled. This is, in my opinion, the easiest and the configuration that makes the most logical sense. In this configuration, instead of a computer being connected to the high speed Internet broadband device you connect to the router. This router acts and the traffic controller. All computer users and access points connect directly to this device and are allconnected to the network to share equally (called peer-to-peer) Internet access and any other network resources such as file servers, printers and each other's files. This router can either be to hard-wire Ethernet connection or wireless ... or both.
Considering the headaches and inefficiency of the first design and the low prices of hardware for the second option, it is a no-brainer for me. When you consider the wasted electricity of keeping a single computer on all the time versus the one-time investment of the hardware router, it only makes economic (and ecological!) sense to go that direction.
Either configuration will enable all computers to access the Internet from a single IP address. This is done through network address translation (NAT) provided by NATrouter. Almost all routers provide this translation. What this means is that every device on the home side of the Internet connection will be assigned its own network IP address while your network is seen from the outside world as a single IP address (assigned to you by your high speed Internet provider). In other words, no matter how many computers you have on you network, they will all be seen as one from the outside world.
This feature provides a measure of security for your network and the computers connected since outside ' hackers ' cannot ' see ' each computer or its address.
But more on wireless network security in a future article.
Wireless Networking-Steps to Share an Internet Connection Interested This:
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