The Computer Guy

Now that high speed internet is the norm, more and more people have a home network. A home network is nothing but 2 or more computers connected together via a router. There is more to it than this, but it all boils down to being that simple. To see how it works, let’s trace the internet connection.

If you have cable internet, the signals come into your house over the cable lines. The cable modem converts these signals into an ethernet (looks like a wide phone jack) connection.

If you have DSL internet, the signals come into your house over the phone lines. The DSL modem converts these signals into an ethernet (looks like a wide phone jack) connection.

From the ethernet connection, the internet travels to your router. The router does several important things. It acts as a firewall, blocking people on the internet from accessing your home network. It provides any computer directly connect with a unique IP address which helps the router know what computer is sending/receiving data from the interent.

An IP address is a set of 4 numbers, each 0-255, which identifies a computer on a network. The router uses something called a subnet which is just a group of IP addresses. Most routers use the subnet 192.168.0, which includes all the addresses from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254. The router is the 192.168.0.1. These addresses might not be the same as your router is using because every router is different.

Because the router has a firewall, you don’t need a firewall on any computer connected to the router, wired or wireless. That means that Windows won’t have to work as hard to protect your computer because you can turn Windows’ firewall off.

A home network isn’t limited to only having computers. A printer can be connected to the network instead of to a computer. After installing the printer software to a computer connected to the network, you can print from another room! A VOIP (Voice Over IP) phone, such as ViaTalk or Vonage, can be connected to the router as well. The list doesn’t stop there either.

When the internet first began, most of the pages were static and didn’t change unless someone manually edited the HTML. Recently, more and more sites have become dynamic. Blogs, Forums, Social Networks, and Wikis have contributed to a movement on the internet dubbed “Web 2.0″. Basically, Web 2.0 refers to website that allow regular users to read and write content to the web.

Forums were the first big step. Forums just let people post questions, answer questions, and share ideas with others. These have been around since the late 1980s when people did not have access to the internet.

Blogs are newer than forums. A blog is simply a self-publication for the web. You can create a blog for any topic you can think of. The blog writers create content and many blogs supply a comments section for feedback, so users can read the blog, then write their ideas.

Wikis, such as Wikipedia, are collections of content. A user can read, edit, and create articles. Then that information is out on the web for anyone to read. Wikipedia is the most popular wiki containing millions of articles on a variety of subjects. Because anyone can edit or create content, the content is almost guaranteed to be up to date.

Social Networks provide a way for real world and internet friends to communicate online very easily. These sites boil down to the simple fact that a user has a set of friends and can send them messages as well as having a profile page. Some sites serve a particular purpose, like delicious is only for bookmarks.

I hope this clears up any confusion about what Web 2.0 is.

A lot of people have WiFi, or a wireless network. Sadly, many of the WiFi networks are completely open and anyone can log onto the internet and a home network without a password. This is a big security risk. There are plenty of options available, and you won’t have to buy anything extra.

The most common security for wireless routers is WEP security. This requires a 6 or 13 character password to access the wireless network. Without the password, you won’t be able to access it at all.

Almost every router has a web page built in that you can use to change the settings. To get to it, first you have to know the network address of the router; this is always the gateway address of any computer connected to the router. You can find it by click on Start->Run, then type ‘cmd’ and click OK. This should bring up what looks like a DOS box or command prompt. Type ‘ipconfig’ and press enter. Just type the ‘Default Gateway’ address into your web browser.

You should have a login page, if not, please leave a comment with the make & model of router and I’ll see what I can dig up about your router. If you’ve never ever seen this page before, then the factory password is probably still in place. Most of the time the username is ‘admin’ and the password is either ‘default’, ‘admin’, or should be left blank. Again, if none of these work, leave me a comment and I’ll look it up for you.

Once you are logged into the router, there should be a link labeled wireless, security, or setup; Click it. You should see a drop down box with WEP in it. Select WEP. You may have to save settings before you can enter a password, and if this is the case, make sure you are on a hard wired computer, not a wireless one. Make sure you choose 128-bit, not 64-bit which is inferior. Setup your password and save the changes.

You should be all set up. If none of these directions work, please leave a comment or google your make & model router for information on how to set it up. Most sites list step-by-step instructions.

Once you are secured, you won’t have people hoping on your network. Please note that this doesn’t mean that you wireless network is completely secure because everytime there’s new security, hundreds of people try to break it and many succeed.

If you live out in the country with no one around for 200 yards, you are safe enough to run the wireless without any security, but I advise you to set it up anyways, because you never know.

No two web browsers are created equally. Internet Explorer, shipped with Microsoft’s Windows, is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many many web browsers out there, but Internet Explorer, or IE, is the most popular. Firefox, from The Mozilla Foundation, is an open-source* web browser that is completely customizable. If you haven’t checked it out yet, try it for a day. I’m sure you’ll love it.

Back in the old days of the internet there were two main web browsers, IE and Netscape. Netscape was purchased by AOL in the 1990’s, and AOL made parts of it open-source. The Mozilla Foundation was created and used the openly available source code to create Firefox. Since, Firefox has gained a small portion of the market because of it’s customizability and price**.

I use Firefox 95%*** of the time. While I’m surfing, I can see the weather, current & forecast & animated radar, the amount time I have left to work today, the latest tech news, whether a page is valid, who signed off on the security of the site I’m on, and a Google/Yahoo/Wikipedia search box. I see this information no matter what page I am on because I have various extensions, or Add ons, installed.

My extensions include:

• Forecastfox Enhanced (larger radar loop than Forecastfox)
• Web Developer’s Toolbar
• WizzRSS
• Firebug
• Del.icio.us Buttons
• Adblock Plus
• HTML Validator
• Server Spy

I have experimented with creating my own extensions as well, that’s the one that tells me how long I have left to work today.

Beyond Add ons, there are themes. A theme is just a styling of the browser itself. There are tons of these readily, and freely, available. There’s even a Walnut theme which paints the status bar, menu bar, and all the toolbars to look like Walnut wood, grains and all. I just use the plain jane theme that came with Firefox.

If you feel like IE isn’t working for you anymore, or you just want to try something different, then give Firefox a try! Download it at http://www.getfirefox.com/.

*Open source is just netspeak, or technical jargon, for a piece of software whose source code is made available to the public.

**All open source software is free.

***This would be 100% of the time if I didn’t care about the people who use IE.