HowToDoThings.com Local Area Networks

How To Connect 2 PCs Directly

alexalexL — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:50:31 -0500

Sometimes people need to connect two PCs. When and why?

Imagine this situation. You come to your friend's house with your laptop to show him the video about your last vacation in Brazil. He wants to have this video, too, and he wants to have it now. What can you do? Use your 2GB USB flash card? No, the size of the video file is much larger. Burn the video on DVD? No, that would take several hours.

Here's another situation. Your elder son found a new PC strategy game. It's so cool, and he wants to play network game with you next weekend. You have a laptop and home computer, but how do you connect them for this network game?

So many different situations...

What you need in order to connect 2 PCs:

How To Transfer Files from a Desktop to a Laptop

rik — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:46:46 -0600

More and more people must rely on using a laptop/portable PC in their ever-busy lives to keep up with their workload, and then find they have different copies of the same file on this PC and their desktop. The easiest solution is having all machines networked and storing all working files on the network's file server(s). However, if you need to work at home and other locations using multiple computers, this may not be possible.

How To Use the Internet Through Email

jamsam — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:46:12 -0600

You might have seen or worked for organizations that do not allow their employees to access the Internet, but they are allowed to have email send/receive access. This article will describe the 9 most useful email addresses where you will be able to browse through web pages, read blogs, stay updated with news (CNN, BBC), upload videos, pictures and much more stuff for fun.

How To Design a Local Area Network

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:10:08 -0600

To design any network layout, it is important to know the basic LAN topologies and to consider their advantages and disadvantages. There are basically three topologies, and you can choose according to your need.

Bus Topology: This is a very simple way of connecting computers. In this type of layout, all computers are hooked on a single transmission medium, usually a coaxial wire, using T-connectors. A terminator is also placed at the wire's end in order to absorb free signals so that the computers can send data.

Advantages:

Simple installation.
Economical use of cable.
Media is inexpensive and easy to work with.
Simple and reliable.
Easy to extend

Disadvantages:

Can slow down in heavy traffic.
Difficult to troubleshoot.
Cable break can affect many users.
High EMI (electromagnetic interference).

How To Subnet

mcsherry1986 — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:25:18 -0500

In this article I will show you a quick and easy way to work out the subnet mask from slash notation in 3 easy steps.

Identify how many bits have been used. If you are presented with an IP address and it has a slash notation on the end -- e.g. /24 -- this is just another way of writing the subnet mask. It essentially means that you have used 24 bits to create the subnet mask.
Translate slash notation to binary numbers. Once you know how many bits are being used you can now write out the slash notation in its binary equivalent. If we use the example above, we know that we have used 24 bits. Now that you know this, you will need to write the number out in groups of eight. Once you have reached the number of bits you have borrowed, fill the rest of the octets in with 0’s.
E.g.
11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000

read more

How To Connect Linux and XP Machines

Lloyd244 — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:38:00 -0500

Linux and Windows XP: They come from diffrent world's right? There is no way you can possibly get the two to comminucate.... behold the magic of TCP/IP, sure the machines are different but the protocol that allow them to talk remains the same. It's all in the tools and knowing how to use them.

The following examples use Debian Stable and Windows XP Home Edition, however the basic principles still apply.

Topics of this article will include:

Windows File Sharing on a Linux based PC
Remote Desktop Administration between a Linux Based PC and a Windows XP based PC

Windows File Sharing on a Linux based PC

Before we begin you will need a few tools. On your Debian machine, open a console window and become root temporarily.