How to Setup a Small Home Network — Part 2

Last time we went over the steps to setting up and securing your home network. We talked about home networking equipment and the step by step process of setting up, configuring and securing your small home network.

Today we’ll finish off with setting up a network printer — I’ll show you how to connect a wired and a wireless printer on your network.

We’ll end with setting up file sharing between the computers on your network — I’ll show you how to setup a workgroup, configure your network location and configure sharing options.

Printing on Your Small Home Network

There are several ways to setup printing on a small home network. Today we will discuss printing to a network printer, wired or wireless.

When you purchase your printer make sure you can connect it to your network via a cable, or make sure it’s wireless. Most new printers these days have networking capabilities.

I’m going to give a broad description on how to setup a network printer so hopefully it can apply to more than one type. Let’s get started!

Our network address is still the Linksys default of 192.168.1.0 so we will need to set an IP address on our printer in this range. Something to consider is your DHCP scope of 192.168.1.100-192.168.1.150. Make sure you don’t set your printer to an IP address in this range to avoid having duplicate IP addresses on your network. The DHCP scope can be changed to a different range if you like, and the scopes vary on different types of routers. Make sure to refer to your router web interface or router documentation for these settings.

  • Connecting a Wired Printer to Your Network

If your printer is a wired printer, connect it to one of the open switch ports on the back your router. Usually you can set the IP address using the display and the keypad on the printer. Instead, let’s print a configuration page and check to see if it picked up DHCP address.

Most printers are set to DHCP by default fresh out of the box. Once you find the IP address it obtained automatically, we need to enter that into our web browser so we can access the web interface of the printer. This will really simplify the configuration process.

Once you get to the web interface look for the network settings or TCP/IP settings page. Given our network addressing let’s use these IP settings:

IP Address: 192.168.1.20
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.1

Once you save your settings you will need to connect to the new IP address in your browser if you need to make more changes.

  • Connecting a Wireless Printer to Your Network

If you have a wireless printer you will need to get the key or passphrase you wrote down earlier when we setup the wireless security. At this point you will need to use the display and keypad on the printer to connect it to your wireless network.

Look for “wireless settings”, or something similar, and enter your key or passphrase. Once you are connected it’s always easiest to log into the web interface of the printer.

Print a configuration page after you connect to the wireless network, and enter the IP address into your web browser. Look for the Network Settings or TCP/IP settings and use the same addressing as above.

Now your printer has a static IP address of 192.168.1.20. With network printers, it’s always good to use a static IP address to avoid printing issues. If the printer gets a new DHCP address you could have issues connecting to your printer.

  • Connecting Your Computers to Your Network Printer

Now all you need to do is add the printer to your computers. You can use the setup disk that came with the printer to install it, and when it asks for the printer’s IP address enter 192.168.1.20.

Here is a Microsoft article on how to connect to a network printer in Vista — click the link “To connect to a network printer” for details.

 

Sharing Files on Your Small Home Network

File sharing has become easier in Windows Vista in comparison to XP. Let’s discuss how to configure file and printer sharing in Windows Vista for your home environment. We need to do the following three things to properly configure file sharing:

1. First we need to set all computers to the same workgroup name.
2. Vista gives options for your network location such as public and private. We will need to configure this correctly for sharing to work as expected.
3. Now we need to enable the different file and printer sharing features and options.

  • Setting up a Workgroup for File Sharing

Let’s start with setting the workgroup name in Windows Vista.

1. Right click on Computer and select Properties.

2. This will take you to the System window. Look for the section called “Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings” and click on Change Settings from this area.

3. Now you should be at the System Properties window. While on the Computer Name tab click Change.

4. This will take you to the Computer Name/Domain Changes window. At the bottom of this window is your workgroup name. The default is Workgroup — you can leave it at this but I’d recommend changing it to something else.

I’m going to name mine “Eric Home”. Also, check to make sure your computer name is unique. If you have a computer with the same name on your network it can cause issues.

After you change the workgroup you will be prompted to restart.

5. Change the workgroup setting to the same thing on all other computers on your network that you will be sharing files with.

  • Configuring Your Network Location for File Sharing

Now we need to configure the network location. There are usually 3 options for your network location: Domain, Public, and Private.

The type of network we are setting up is a private network.

 
1. To change this setting open the Network and Sharing Center by clicking Start, and typing “network and sharing center”.

Alternately you can go to Control Panel, then click Network and Sharing Center.

2. Look at the Network section and make sure it’s set to Private.

If not, click Customize next to the Network section. That will take you to the Set Network Location window. Set the Network type to Private, click Next, then Close.

  • Configuring Sharing Options

Now we need to configure file and printer sharing options. These options are also located in the Network and Sharing Center.

With this window open look at the Sharing and Discovery section. There is a down arrow next to each item that allows you to configure the different options. There is also a green light next to each item if it is enabled.

1. Click the down arrow next to File Sharing. Make sure it is turned on.

2. If you have a USB printer attached to your computer you can enable printer sharing so network users can print to your USB printer. After you enable printer sharing you will need to share your printer.

3. Password protected sharing is the biggest thing to look at because with this feature enabled you need to have a username and password to connect to your shared folders or shared printers.

You can also have the same user account and password on both computers and leave this option turned on. If you don’t want to enter a username and password when connecting to shared folders turn this option off.

4. Now that we have all that stuff configured it’s time to find the folder we want to share. Navigate to the folder you want to share right click it, and choose Share.

5. This will take you to the file sharing window. Choose all the people you want to share with then click Share. In this example I picked “Everyone” from the drop down list.

6. Now your folder is shared. Write down the path to the shared folder. In this example the path is \\VISTA64\Shared Folder.

7. Now go to your other computer and click Start, and type the path to the shared folder that you wrote down on the last step.

For this example: \\VISTA64\Shared Folder. That should take you right to the shared folder you created.

Alternately you can click Start, and then click Network.

8. Find your other computer by name and double click it.

This should list all of the shared folders and printers on that computer.

Sharing Folders and Printers in XP and NAS

Sharing folders and printers in XP is similar to Vista but there are a few differences to be aware of.

Here is a link on how to setup folder and printer sharing in XP.

Another idea for file sharing is a NAS drive (Network Attached Storage Drive) that you can connect to your network and use as a file share. A NAS drive works well when using PCs and Macs that both need to share files between each other. This is because most NAS drives are formatted in FAT32 which is recognized by both Windows and Mac.

Now You’re Cooking With Gas!

Now you should have a pretty good grasp of how to setup a small home network. Your network can vary in size and types of devices — you can even connect your iPhone or PDA.

I hope this will serve you as a broad overview and a guide to follow when setting up your own home network.

What else would you add to your home network?

 

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