Networking Help

Establishing a home network
Setting up a computer network in your home or small office.
Peer to Peer
Networking computers with shared resources.
Servers
File, Printer, Mail, Internet Servers, etc
Dial Up Networking
Remote connection to the internet or other networks via a phone line.

For information on transmitting files across a network connection see the information provided on the Comms Software page.

There are four different network protocols that I know of that are in common use. These protocols and some of the common applications that run on them are:

NetBEUI - which is windows based and supports
- NFS - Network File System
- SMB - Server Message Block
- SNMP - Simple Network Management Protocol
Netware - which is a network operating system itself
SNA - IBM's System Network Architecture which supports
- VTAM on the mainframe and
- APPC on PCs
TCP/IP - which is the communications protocol used by the internet as well as by many smaller networks. TCP/IP supports
- HTTP - Hypertext transfer protocol used for web pages where the address is prefixed by http:// or https:// (for secure servers).
- FTP - File transfer protocol used for file transfers where the address is prefixed by ftp://.
- SMTP - Simple mail transfer protocol used to send emails where the address is prefixed by mailto:.
- Telnet - used to connect to a command prompt on a remote computer where the address is prefixed by telnet:.

If you are setting up a home network then you have a choice of up to three of these. If you have Netware installed then you can set up a Netware network. If all of the computers that you are networking are running a version of Windows then you can create a very quick and simple network using NetBEUI. Regardless of the operating systems that you are running you can set up a network using TCP/IP. Of these the TCP/IP configuration is the most complicated. To install SNA on a PC requires additional software purchases.