Build a Home Network

Everyday when ET returns from his classes to his apartment he eagerly yearns to throw himself on top his comfy chair and simply surf the internet at his own convenience. Unfortunately, ET is living with two other roommates that maliciously wish to use all of their bandwidth on a daily basis. Ah, the horror! Luckily, ET has pondered away during his free time of how to resolve this emerging conflict. He has carefully noted that his apartment contains three computers: two desktops and one laptop. After consulting with his trusty side-kick, Andy Chung or better known as Andy, both of them absolutely believe that the most optimal solution to this conflict is to purchase a router. However, during ET's brief time in researching about routers he has discovered that he could a) purchase a wired router or b) purchase a wireless router.

For our project we ultimately decided to use the wireless networking package; it is the most popular tool since it supports wireless (most laptops) and wired (most desktop) connection. The laptop has built-in wireless capability; on the other hand both desktops do not support wireless connections, therefore they would need to be connected to the network through wires. The project will help determine if the purchase of a wireless router would worth the money.

Our first step to assist ET in his wonderful 'networking' adventures was to start by researching for general information on the internet about the different router brands that are on the market. We narrowed our choices to two router brands: D-Link and Linksys. Afterwards we went to Circuit City and Best Buy to talk to their representatives and ask them questions about the two router brands we focused on. The representatives of both stores seemed to agree that the best routers to use were Linksys routers. They directed us to two different models of Linksys routers: the WRT54GS, and the WRT54G. We focused our in-depth research on those two models. From our dismay, we've discovered that most of the Linksys routers offer 4-port Ethernet switch (they will allow us to connect the desktop with wires), transfer rates up to 54 Mbps and advance security. The GS model offers additional speed and higher security, but it requires extra hardware. We located two routers that would completely satisfy our needs based upon our budget (see Annex A for a more detailed comparaison).

Afterwards, we turned out baseball caps backwards and slowly crept around the store to compare the prices for each router. Our results displayed that at Best Buy and Circuit City we could have easily purchased the G version for $69.99 and the GS version for 59.99$ ($89.99 with a $30 dollars mail-in-rebate). CompUSA's were the same as Best Buy and Circuit City, but they didn't have the $30 mail-in-rebate on the GS version. At the time of the research on Newegg.com the price of the GS router was the same as the other stores, but the price of the G router was significantly lower: $39.99 (54.99$ with a $15.00 mail-in-rebate). Since Newegg.com has different rebates almost everyday, the prices may have changed. We decided to go with the WRT54G because it offered WPA (Wi-Fi protected access), wireless MAC address filtering and a SPI firewall and was significantly cheaper. We were quite comfortable with the level of security offered by the WRT54G and we strongly felt that it wasn't required to purchase extra hardware. The following table will help better visualize the different prices.

WRT54G $69.99 $69.99 $69.99 $39.99**

WRT54GS $59.99* $59.99* $89.99 $59.99

* After a $30 mail-in-rebate

** After a $15 mail-in-rebate

The first thing to do before we setup the network is to power off all the devices (hardware). The next thing to do is to connect the cable modem to the router with a RJ45 cable. Then, it is time to connect the desktops to the router using the 4 Ethernet ports. Once the desktops are connected to the router you can turn on the modem and the router. The setup of the network is technically a simple process. Since all Linksys routers come with an installation CD it makes fairly simple. The CD contains the step-by-step procedures that guide the user throughout the installation. It is required to use Linksys' web-based program to setup the software on the computers. This procedure depends on the type of internet connection. Once the connection settings are done, it is important to create one or many wireless network ID. Since both ET and his roommate would be using the network, it would be better to create two different IDs. IDs are matched with a password to prevent strangers from gaining access to the network. The next step is to "reset" (turning off and on) the cable modem. Finally, since we're unsure if Linksys has released any new firmware for this specific router, Andy suggested going online and searching for updates at their official website. In our case there wasn't for the time being. If a new release of the firmware did exist (which probably will in the future) then there will be an online step-by-step instruction with various forms of support to help guide us in the emergency that something devastating occurs.

After a rigorous