Question for the Experts: Home PC Network

[milanbenes]

Morning All,

can someone tell me how how PC networks work.

What I mean is, assumption:

House has two cat5 cables running to every room

All cat5 cables run back to a central point and patch panel (server room)

Internet connection cable runs into the server room

Now for the question, how does it ?


Internet cable comes in, does it first go into a FIREWALL PC and THEN to the patch panel or how does it work ?

The PC with the firewall software will also store music and films, what network software will be required that this pc becomes a server on the network accessible by any pc from any network connection in the house ?

Thanks, confused from scandinavia.

Milan.

[VectraMan]

Is your patch panel actually a patch panel or a network hub/switch? Because you don't mention that, and you must have one.

Normally your firewall would have two network cards. One would connect direct to the internet router, and the other would connect to your LAN - i.e. into the hub. All your PCs would connect to the same hub, and voila, you have internet access protected by the firewall.

What to run on the firewall I've no idea. I'm sure there's some freebie boot off a USB stick Linux thing that would work.

[milanbenes]

thanks vauxhall, useful info,

house has two network cables in every room all coming back to one central point, i guess there will be a patch panel for all these network cables ?

or based upon the following scenario what will I need to do :

Scenario:

house has two network cables in every room all coming back to one central point/cupboard

internet connection terminates in the same cupboard



What to do now to setup a home network connected to the internet and secured ?


Thanks,

Milan.

[milanbenes]

Vauxhall,

you said,

'Normally your firewall would have two network cards. One would connect direct to the internet router, and the other would connect to your LAN - i.e. into the hub. ',


instead of one pc with two networks cards is it better to have a real cheap pc as the firewall and then that one connected to the main server and then the connection to the hub

therefore really isolating the main server from the firewall, is this a DMZ ?

Thanks,

Milan.

[DimPrawn]

Modern cheap routers have a built in Firewall that appears to use embedded Linux. Why waste 60-100w on electricity for a firewall using a PC when a £80 dedicated router will have one built in that uses bugger all power?

E.g. http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=486

[chubba]

Totally agree with the prawn. Telephone line connects to ADSL Modem / Router and this patches out to individual PCs on the network or if you have more than the standard 4 cat5 connections these routers come with then you can plug one of them into a switch.

The modem / router will have inbuilt firewall and acts as DHCP server so all PCs that connect to it will be protected from nasties via the firewall and will also be assigned an IP within a group so filesharing becomes easy.

The to share files use one of the PCs elsewhere in the house as the media / backup server or pop one in the room with the router.

Easy peasy.

[milanbenes]

thanks very much,

Milan.

[sparklelard]

And as per a post I made a few weeks ago, disable the firewall software on the PCs as this may cause problems with file sharing.


The firewall software in the router is more than adequate.

I have BT Total Broadband. It has 2 x Cat 5, a USB and wireless connection points, all protected by the inbuilt firewall.

It also has a telephone socket for VOIP. I use BT Talk and I get no charges if used after 6pm or weekends to 01 numbers. Brilliant for a second line.

[Sockpuppet]

Its also worth noting that NAT will do a very good job of protecting your computers by making them inaccessable to the outside world unless they request the info (a virus scanner for anti trojans) or you tell the router to forward the port to them.

Genius.

[milanbenes]

what's NAT ?

sorry, I'll crawl back in my hole

Milan.