Why a Home Network?
October 12, 2003
By:
There was a time when home networking was a luxury and was quite expensive to install. Nowadays, as technology becomes cheaper and more accessible, home networking has become a standard within the home. In this article I want to describe why one should install a home network, the different types of home networking, and a general idea of how to set it up.
Why do I need a home computer network?
There was a time when a family would only have one computer within the house and everyone would share that one computer for word processing, web surfing, and emailing. Now computers are getting cheaper and people are using computers more. This has lead people to buy multiple computers within the home, one for each computer user. This allows each person to use their computer when they want to and do not have to share their computer with others.
However, with multiple computers a few problems have arisen.
<b>Internet sharing</b>
In order to go online each computer needs a separate phone line, modem and Internet account. This can be very expensive. Lets take a look at these prices (for the San Francisco bay area) for one computer: Additional phone line $12.99 per month, and $19.99 for Internet service per month. So thatís approximately $34 per month for one computer. Now if you have 3 computers in the house thatís, $112 per month for slow speed Internet access! Also, donít forget that you will have to pay for your local telephone company to set up the new telephone accounts at your home. This can cost several hundred dollars depending on the complexity.
<b>Printing</b>
No matter what you are doing at some point youíre going to want to print something. But with multiple computers this means having a printer attached to each computer. Prices of printers are becoming cheaper and cheaper, however the cost of replacing the ink cartridges is more expensive than the printer itself! On my last trip to the electronics store it cost me $60 in cartridges for an Epson printer I got for $79! So lets add that up: 3 computers with 3 printers at $79 each. Lets do the math, thatís $237 for the printers. Donít forget we have to replace those cartridges at least once! Thatís $60 for one printer, and weíve got 3 printers here, thatís $180.
So with the price of the printers plus replacement cartridges is $417!
<b>File Sharing</b>
Now we've all got files to share. Word documents, photos, mp3's or video files. But how do we can we transfer files? The good old floppy disc, but wait that only stores 1.3MB of information. For those of you who have photos, mp3s or videos know perfectly well that 1.3MB is not enough to transfer one mp3, let alone several hundred.
For those of you who are using Mac's you would have noticed that the newer Macís do not have a floppy drive. Apple realized a long time ago the floppy drive would become obsolete due to the small capacity.
Okay, so what options do we have to transfer files from one computer to another.
<b>1. Larger disks, such as the Iomega Zip disk. </b>These can store either 100MB or 250 MB depending on the type of Iomega drive you buy. However, the disks can cost anywhere from $7-$15 per disk. For a 250MB disk costing $15 that's 6 cents per MB.
<b>2. CD-R's</b> are another option for data transfer. With CD-R's you burn your data permanently to the CD. This process takes time depending on the speed of your computer/burner and the amount of data to burn. The time range from 3 minutes to 40 minutes. These discs have become cheaper over the past few years and now can be brought for approximately 30 cents per 700MB disc. On a per MB cost that's 0.04 cents per MB. Quite a difference from the zip disc.
<b>3. CD-RW's </b> are very similar to CD-R's except that data is not permanently burnt on to the cd. You can burn the data and then later erase it, or continue to add data until the disc is full. However the price of the CD-RW is more expensive than a regular blank CD. Discs range in price from $5 to $10 for a 650MB CD-RW. Again, on a per MB cost this is approximately 1.53 cents per MB.
<b>4. DVD-R(DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW).</b> This is the next biggest thing after recordable CDs to burn data onto. Apple first introduced the DVD-R in January 2001 with the Pioneer A03 drive. Since then many other DVD-R and a competing format DVD+R drives have come available and are much cheaper. DVD-R price per disc is about $2 for 4.7Gb (4.3Gb when formatted). This works out to be 0.06 cents per MB for DVD-R.
Anyhow, as you can see these methods of transferring files are very expensive. They are however great for backing up purposes which is highly recommended.
As you can see, when you have more than 2 computers, Internet access, printing and file sharing can become very, very expensive in both time and money.
Why do I need a home computer network?
There was a time when a family would only have one computer within the house and everyone would share that one computer for word processing, web surfing, and emailing. Now computers are getting cheaper and people are using computers more. This has lead people to buy multiple computers within the home, one for each computer user. This allows each person to use their computer when they want to and do not have to share their computer with others.
However, with multiple computers a few problems have arisen.
<b>Internet sharing</b>
In order to go online each computer needs a separate phone line, modem and Internet account. This can be very expensive. Lets take a look at these prices (for the San Francisco bay area) for one computer: Additional phone line $12.99 per month, and $19.99 for Internet service per month. So thatís approximately $34 per month for one computer. Now if you have 3 computers in the house thatís, $112 per month for slow speed Internet access! Also, donít forget that you will have to pay for your local telephone company to set up the new telephone accounts at your home. This can cost several hundred dollars depending on the complexity.
<b>Printing</b>
No matter what you are doing at some point youíre going to want to print something. But with multiple computers this means having a printer attached to each computer. Prices of printers are becoming cheaper and cheaper, however the cost of replacing the ink cartridges is more expensive than the printer itself! On my last trip to the electronics store it cost me $60 in cartridges for an Epson printer I got for $79! So lets add that up: 3 computers with 3 printers at $79 each. Lets do the math, thatís $237 for the printers. Donít forget we have to replace those cartridges at least once! Thatís $60 for one printer, and weíve got 3 printers here, thatís $180.
So with the price of the printers plus replacement cartridges is $417!
<b>File Sharing</b>
Now we've all got files to share. Word documents, photos, mp3's or video files. But how do we can we transfer files? The good old floppy disc, but wait that only stores 1.3MB of information. For those of you who have photos, mp3s or videos know perfectly well that 1.3MB is not enough to transfer one mp3, let alone several hundred.
For those of you who are using Mac's you would have noticed that the newer Macís do not have a floppy drive. Apple realized a long time ago the floppy drive would become obsolete due to the small capacity.
Okay, so what options do we have to transfer files from one computer to another.
<b>1. Larger disks, such as the Iomega Zip disk. </b>These can store either 100MB or 250 MB depending on the type of Iomega drive you buy. However, the disks can cost anywhere from $7-$15 per disk. For a 250MB disk costing $15 that's 6 cents per MB.
<b>2. CD-R's</b> are another option for data transfer. With CD-R's you burn your data permanently to the CD. This process takes time depending on the speed of your computer/burner and the amount of data to burn. The time range from 3 minutes to 40 minutes. These discs have become cheaper over the past few years and now can be brought for approximately 30 cents per 700MB disc. On a per MB cost that's 0.04 cents per MB. Quite a difference from the zip disc.
<b>3. CD-RW's </b> are very similar to CD-R's except that data is not permanently burnt on to the cd. You can burn the data and then later erase it, or continue to add data until the disc is full. However the price of the CD-RW is more expensive than a regular blank CD. Discs range in price from $5 to $10 for a 650MB CD-RW. Again, on a per MB cost this is approximately 1.53 cents per MB.
<b>4. DVD-R(DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW).</b> This is the next biggest thing after recordable CDs to burn data onto. Apple first introduced the DVD-R in January 2001 with the Pioneer A03 drive. Since then many other DVD-R and a competing format DVD+R drives have come available and are much cheaper. DVD-R price per disc is about $2 for 4.7Gb (4.3Gb when formatted). This works out to be 0.06 cents per MB for DVD-R.
Anyhow, as you can see these methods of transferring files are very expensive. They are however great for backing up purposes which is highly recommended.
As you can see, when you have more than 2 computers, Internet access, printing and file sharing can become very, very expensive in both time and money.
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