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Home Networking

Toronto Star Fast Forward Section Front for April 27, 2000

Copyright ©, Myles White, 2000

Not more than a couple of years ago, it would have been ludicrous to write an article on computer networking for a general-interest newspaper. Networking was a topic for computer geeks at best, and only for a small percentage of them, too. By most computer users it was regarded as a black art understood only by a few technicians in a corporate IT (Information Technology) department.

That was then and this is now. Home computer users are about to be inundated with information on home networking and it's going to be coming at them from all angles.

According to the survey company, ACNeilsen, over 52 per cent of Canadians have a computer in their home (based on 1999 figures and up around 13 per cent from 1998). The numbers are higher in Ontario and BC, lower in Quebec and the Maritimes, but that's the cross-country average. In raw numbers, another Canadian surveyor, the "Print Measurement Bureau" (PMB), says the number of households with a computer rose from 3.75 million to over 4.42 million in that one-year period.

Why we're about to see a surge in home networking exhortations is that both ACNeilsen and PMB report that nearly a third of all households with a computer have more than one. PMB's numbers suggest a 21 per cent growth from 1998 to 1999 alone (690,000 to 835,000). Intel Canada's figures are even higher: it estimates that there are between one and two million Canadian homes with more than one PC. Dataquest, another company well established in the computer industry, reports that there are 15 million homes with more than one computer in the US and that over 60 per cent of new PC purchases are by families that already have one or more computers. That figure is in line with what someone at IBM Canada told me recently in connection with another story.

In short, connecting computers and other appliances at home is about to become big business.

Ways to skin a cat (or a network)

Within the past year, the number of ways you can connect two or more computers together at home has grown significantly. As of this week, they include:

"SneakerNet:" This one is a bit of a joke. It means you transfer data to a floppy or Zip disk or CD-ROM disc, then hotfoot it over to the other computer and transfer the data from the disk/disc to the second computer. This is as about as crude a "network" as you can get, but it's the one most home users still employ. Total cost: nil in terms of money, lots in terms of your time.

Direct Cable Connection: Available to two Windows-based PCs running Windows 95 or later, via special parallel or serial cables. It's really only useful if the two systems are in the same room, and then only to transfer files back and forth, and both systems have to have "Dial-up Networking" and Microsoft's IPX/SPX network protocol installed before it works. The special cables, however, cost less than $20 and there's no other software to buy. It's a "quick-and-dirty" solution many people use to transfer data back and forth between a desktop and a notebook system. Total cost: under $20.

Hardwired Ethernet Network: There are hard wired networking schemes other than Ethernet, but this networking "standard," originally developed by Xerox as a way to get printers to operate, is the least expensive and technically demanding method of hardwiring two or more computers together. To make it work you need an Ethernet network interface card (NIC) in each system and either an Ethernet cross-over cable for just two systems or a central hub to connect three or more.

Ethernet has become the generic name of this particular network solution; it's not a brand name. Many companies sell Ethernet components. In today's market, there are two basic flavours of Ethernet, known as 10-Base-T (top speed 10 Megabits/second or Mbps) or 10/100-Base-T (up to 100 Mbps). There's also another version using a cable similar, but not identical, to TV cable, but this particular version supports only 10 Mbps and few NICs support it any more. In order to have your whole network run at 100 Mbps requires that the NICs, the cable, and the hub all support this speed.

Using Ethernet, you can connect all of the computers in your house, no matter where they're located in relation to each other. They can be in the same room, the next room over, or two floors away. The only hitch is that you have to connect the systems via Ethernet cables and, unless your house is brand new and you convinced the builder to run Category 5 (100 Mbps) cable to every room, that means doing some renovations. 

I doubt that most of you are willing to do as I've done in my home office (I used a hole saw between two rooms and ran a 2-inch conduit between them) and most others are reluctant to start drilling holes in floors and ceilings. But it's either that or you have wires running under carpets (not good), over doorways (ditto), or simply snaking down the hall (wheeee!).

However, once you get this problem sorted out, there's rarely any software to buy; drivers for the NICs will come with them and Windows 9x supplies the protocols. The NICs can be had for under $50 each and hubs, depending on whether they support 10 or 100 Mbps and whether they have five, eight, or more ports available, are widely available for under $150.

Once you have the network installed, and assuming nothing went wrong (ground loops, cable loops, magnetic, electrical, or radio interference, and/or failure to understand the Windows networking applet), you should easily be able to transfer data back and forth among your computers, share a modem to get all of them on the Internet (including both Sympatico High-Speed Edition and the TV cable "@Home" service. Windows 98 Second Edition or some third-party solution required). And (always assuming you have the right version and licenses) you can use one computer to run programs housed on another computer.

Total solution for three computers: roughly $300 plus the cost of renovations for running cable, plus the lawyer (just in case your spouse decides that this was the final straw)

Home Phonline Networking: This is an initiative currently supported through something called the PNA or Phoneline Networking Alliance a consortium of heavy hitters that includes 3Com, AMD, AT&T, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Lucent Technologies (Bell), and Rockwell Semiconductor Systems.

What these companies and others who have joined the Alliance since are trying to do is to hammer out some standards for using your home's existing telephone lines as a conduit for sending data among your systems. This one isn't going to be any less of a problem than installing Ethernet if you don't have any telephone extensions in your home. But the assumption is that you're more likely, at least in this day and age, to have wiring for a phone in more than one room than you are to have the wiring for a computer.

PNA products by all of the companies that have so far produced some, began with 1 Mbps and have recently graduated to 10 Mbps, with some weird variations (11 Mbps) and mutters in the boardrooms about one day having 100 Mbps available. First, however, the Alliance needs to produce a common standard that can be agreed upon by both of the main international standards bodies, the ITU (they produce the "Vee-Dot" standards for modems V.90, for example) and the IEEE (an engineering body that among other things sets the standards for parallel cables and FireWire).

In other words, it's still possible to get devices from two different PNA members that won't work together.
What's involved differs from company to company and within product lines. You may be able to get an external device that connects to your computer via Universal Serial Bus (Intel), or one that sits in an expansion slot on your motherboard (just like an Ethernet NIC and both Intel and 3Com have one of these solutions). Then you connect your phone line to the device in each room in which you have a computer (and presumably, an extension jack). 

The system's software is supposed to install simply, automatically configuring your network setup, and not interfering with your existing modem or other Internet connection. Sure it will, and it will likely make it so you can share your Internet connection among your computers, too. Uh huh.

Won't this interfere with your use of the phone line(s)? No, say the companies doing this, it won't or at least it isn't supposed to interfere. The frequency used by the PNA connectors is so high that it will neither interfere with voice or with data transmission.

The cost for the convenience of not having to string wires throughout your home is high. Intel, for example, Intel's AnyPoint 1 Mbps external parallel port version retails at Radio Shack for $144.99 (although there's a $30 US rebate program in place this month). The USB version is $129 ($20 rebate), and the internal "NIC" version is $89. All these prices are for each computer in your network. So, the cost of using this approach for a slow network of three systems is roughly $320 after the rebates, down to about $270 if you use the internal AnyPoint.
Intel has recently introduced 10 Mbps versions of the AnyPoint products, but to date they're not being sold in Canada through any retailers the company could name although they did say that the disrtibutor, Merisel, could make them available to dealers who asked.

Wireless: Here's where we start running into all sorts of interesting choices. After all, why have your computer, especially if it's a notebook you bring home from work, tethered at all? You could simply kick back in the garden to do you work, perhaps with a chilled lemonade in hand, your smiling children playing quietly at your feet, the songs of birds gently wafting through the air, and your devoted spouse offering to massage your tired feet after a long day in the trenches.

Well, yes, the illustration is a little far-fetched. And, that's almost all you have to say about home-based wireless networking, too. Still, I know you thrive on details, so here they are...

There are currently three, totally incompatible, ways to go about having a wireless network in your home. One method, known generically as Home RF, uses frequencies similar to those used in cordless phones and some baby monitors to broadcast signals among your PCs where anyone with the right equipment passing by on the street can also pick them up (urk!).

A second method is a standard known as 802.11. It uses 11 Mbps speeds and 3Com, for example, has released a corporate product, AirConnect, using it. The company says that a consumer version, HomeConnect, will ship later this year, using the same standard.

Then we come to "Bluetooth." That's the code name assigned to yet another wireless home networking connection variant that Intel, among other players such as Ericcson, Nokia, Toshiba, and IBM (the founders). Since its inception in 1998, the consortium has attracted others such as 3Com/Palm, Axis Communication, Compaq, Dell, Lucent Technologies UK Limited, Motorola, Qualcomm, and Xircom. Sound familiar?

How does it work? This is the explanation currently housed at Intel's Web site: "This technology achieves its goal by embedding tiny, inexpensive, short-range transceivers into the mobile devices that are available today, either directly or through an adapter device such as a PC Card. The radio operates on the globally-available unlicensed radio band, 2.45 GHz, and supports data speeds of up to 721 Kbps, as well as three voice channels. Bluetooth-enabled devices and adapters should be available as soon as the first half of 2000. Compliant radios will cost around $20 initially, eventually falling to around $5. The Bluetooth specification targets power consumption of the device from a "hold" mode consuming 30 micro amps to the active transmitting range of 8-30 milliamps (or less than 1/10th of a watt)."

That's the idea, but in practical tests, apparently Bluetooth devices have a very short range and a few other little glitches have arisen that has caused several of the players, including 3Com, to rapidly begin developing alternatives.

Home Wiring: Last, but not least, there's another solution being considered by yet another consortium, filled with names we've already heard, to use your existing house wiring to carry data signals. This association, dubbed the HomePlug Association, thinks it would be a good idea to dispense with all of the above and simply let your computers talk to each other through their power cords. 

Even if your house doesn't have phone extensions, it will unless you're roughing it in the backwoods somewhere have electrical wiring. Of course, so does your neighbour and there's nothing in the existing infrastructure that would prevent people down the street from plugging their computers in and acquiring your data. Hmmm, this one still needs a little work.

Now What?

Let's wrap this up with some predictions. Sooner or later (probably sooner) we'll be living in a world that's completely connected. There will be your computers in whatever form they take, your digital phone, your Personal Digital Assistant (such as a Palm), your television set and other related entertainment devices, your refrigerator and other connected appliances, and they'll all be connected in some form or another.

Based upon your technosavvy and your willingness to do some minor renovations, you may have them connected cheaply at high speed, or simply but with more expense and lower speed). You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that when you were a kid, you couldn't talk to the refrigerator and that you actually had to walk over and push a button to get the television to work. You'll all laugh and the kids will think grandma and grandpa are really quite silly, but they'll still love you anyway.

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