Connect a laptop at home

Part I - Basic Peer-to-Peer - Introduction

In Part I of this laptop-at-home "how to", we'll review the easy steps to connect a laptop to your home network in a basic configuration. In general, this basic configuration will allow you to accomplish a variety of tasks on a peer-to-peer network:

  • share files across your home network and laptop
  • print to a home network printer from your laptop; and
  • link to your home network for other purposes such as gaming.

It will not, as will become obvious as you read one, provide some of the greater functionality of an NT Client/Server connection such as:

  • NT security for file and printer sharing
  • Domain Name Service, or DNS, often used for internet access; and
  • Shared internet access via all types of proxies (although some proxies may allow shared access...check with the software company)

The reasons for this is fairly complex, but simply stated, in this basic configuration we want to get home network connection working while making as few other changes to the computer as possible. After all, the tech support guys at work will not be happy if they need to reconfigure your machine every day you come in from another network at home session.

To accomplish this, we'll go through each of the steps as follows:

In Step 1, we're going to install a network card in the laptop. We'll be using an SMC EZ CardBus 10/100.

In Step 2, we'll make the necessary network control panel adjustments for this newly installed card to allow us to connect to our home network when the card is installed. If we're careful, we won't change anything in the configuration for other hardware such as another network card in the laptop and/or a docking station back in the office; and finally...

In Step 3, we'll take the final software steps to share files and a printer across the home network.

Before we get started, make sure you have the following list of computer and network equipment (or similar):

  • A desktop computer (or computers) that are part of your home network
  • An operating network or at least a network adapter card in the desktop
  • Necessary cabling. We prefer twisted pair but you can also use thin Ethernet cable (thinnet for short; also called coax). If you use twisted pair, you'll also need a hub or a special crossover cable if you'll only be connecting two computers - your desktop and the laptop. We prefer a hub for future expansion and we'll use one in this how to.
  • A network card for your laptop (more on this in Step 1).
  • Windows 95 or 98 on both your desktop and laptop. Of course, you can use other operating systems, but these two from Microsoft have all the network software you'll (except possibly a network card driver that comes with the card). We'll use Windows 95 here in Part 1 and Windows 98 in Part II.

So, let's get started with Step 1.

[ Up ] [ Step 1 ] [ Step 2 ] [ Step 3 ]

 

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This page last updated 07/22/2001