Newbie Finds Life on the Superhighway

What was I thinking? I'm sitting on the cold tile floor of my home office in my bedroom, the metal back off the computer, flashlight in hand. The PC's screen has gone blank. So has my gaze. Twenty minutes ago, the machine was running smoothly. Then, I tried to install an Ethernet network card, so I could finally get high-speed DSL (digital subscriber line) service into my home and put my family's three computers on a wireless network.

But something's gone horribly wrong. The computer won't restart. Now what?

WELCOME TO THE 21st CENTURY

Broadband Internet service and home networking are two of the hottest trends. By 2003, more than 10 million U.S. homes will have networks, meaning two or more computers will connect to share Internet service, files, printers and allow family users to battle each other in computer games, estimates The Yankee Group, a research consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass.

And broadband offers a superfast Net connection. About 3.5 million U.S. homes had DSL service at the end of 2001, according to In-Stat/MDR, a market research firm in Phoenix, Ariz.

When making the move to a broadband, networked home, consumers will want what I sought: simplicity.

"They will be looking for products that are designed to be reliable and easy to use, right out of the box," said Mike Wolf, director of networking research at In-Stat/MDR.

But that hardly seems to be what I've got on my hands, as I start pushing on all the plugs, cords and cables within my computer, trying to revive my dead machine.

Finally, the culprit emerges: a loose ribbon cable. The computer restarts. Next, I put the BellSouth FastAccess CD-ROM in the drive and, in just minutes, install the DSL software.

The first few steps of creating my wireless network are successful. I'm partway home.

THE FIRST STEP

I finally decided to take the leap, invest in the hardware and subscribe to BellSouth's FastAccess DSL service. What's more, I decided to save the $150 BellSouth charges to install the service and do it myself. Actually, I'm among the 96 percent of BellSouth customers who self-install, said Randy Kinkaid, BellSouth senior director of consumer broadband marketing.

Know one thing: I'm no geek. In the 18 years I've owned computers, I've never "cracked the case," or removed a PC's cover to fiddle with the internal hardware. I can install software and handle simple troubleshooting. But when I've needed a hardware upgrade, I've always turned to George, the tech guy who's built my PCs.

The first step: decide what service I want. I've heard good things about cable modems, but some providers suffered outages or went belly-up over the past year. So getting DSL through phone giant BellSouth seemed the simplest and most reliable path. As one friend said, "If something happens to BellSouth, you have bigger problems than your DSL not being available."

On BellSouth's FastAccess.com site it took about 15 minutes to fill out the forms. The charges -- $49.95 a month for service, $125 for the modem -- would appear on my phone bill.

When the UPS truck pulled up with my modem-in-a-box eight days later, the driver handed me a box that said, "Your High-Speed Journey Starts Here."

"Isn't this box a little small to have a service technician inside?" I joked. The delivery man didn't respond. I was on my own.

The box arrived on a Wednesday. I waited until Friday afternoon to start the install. If anything did go wrong, I'd have the weekend to fix it without suffering any downtime for my business as a home-based author and small business consultant.

GETTING IN GEAR

Home networking, or creating a "local area network," seems so simple in theory. Run cables or install wireless devices to link two or more computers. Install some software, and bingo: you're connected.

Not so.

"Hooking up a network can be as hard as trying to connect your TV, DVD player and stereo together," advises David Strom in the book Home Networking Survival Guide. "It's probably harder."

Oh, great.

Again, I had to decide what technology to go with. Wired or wireless?

Wireless seemed better. My primary computer would be in my bedroom home office, 30 feet from the kitchen, where the family PC rests on an island counter. There would be no simple way to run cable between the computers. And on those cool winter afternoons that I might want to take the laptop out on the patio, snaking a cable across the deck would not be my definition of "convenient."

I decided to go with Netgear Inc., and the company's 802.11b (a networking standard) wireless home networking technology (the latest offering is 802.11a, which is five times faster, but more than twice as expensive).

My networking costs: $169 for a wireless router, $99 for a wireless adapter, $74 for a wireless PC card for the laptop -- and, of course, $20 for the network card for the primary computer.

Say what?

Netgear's instructions for installing the network weren't easy to follow. The router had to be configured so it could "talk" with the BellSouth DSL modem. Then the router could connect wirelessly to any computer in the house, sending out data on a 2.4-gigahertz frequency.

After an hour of trying, I called for help.

Do I have TCP IP installed, asked Debashis Pramanik, product line manager for home networking with NetGear in Santa Clara, Calif. What's my PPPoE? Do I have the domain names and IP addresses?

What language are you speaking, I asked.

Part of my problem, he said, was that my PC runs on Windows 98, scorned by service techs and network executives alike as only a baby step improved from Windows 95 in not being well-suited for home networking. It takes a little more configuration to set up the network. Now, if I had Windows 2000, ME or XP…

"All these things make it a little more complex," Pramanik said.

Together we navigated the installation and set-up, and within 30 minutes we were up and running (for those who experience similar woes, the company offers free 24x7 tech support).

SPEEDY SURFING

Now I've got 11 megabits per second of Internet content streaming to my PC. Web sites load almost instantly.

Cool.

No more sounds of the dial-up connection being made. Just launch my Web browser (either Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator), or Outlook Express for e-mail, and I'm connected. Even if the network's primary PC is off, the family can log on to the broadband connection from the other computers. As I write this, my wife is checking her e-mail from our other PC.

Security threats with an "always on" connection to the Internet cannot be overlooked. My subscription to BellSouth Fast Access included a downloadable version of Symantec's Norton Personal Firewall, designed to keep hackers out. I still upgrade my Norton anti- virus software on each computer weekly.

What will all this cost? Fast-Access runs $49.95 a month. But since DSL shares space on the home phone line, I'll disconnect the second phone line I got for dial-up Internet service and save $16. And I'll switch to a much cheaper CompuServe Internet package.

So I'll be paying $17 dollars more than I had been paying for dial-up Internet service. And I saved half a day of George's time -- close to $300 -- by installing it myself.

That's a pretty cheap ticket to the 21st century.

Jeff Zbar, the ChiefHomeOfficer.com, is a speaker, writer and expert on alternative officing. He is the author of Teleworking & Telecommuting: Strategies for Remote Workers and Their Managers (Made E-Z Products, 2002); Safe@Home: Seven Keys to Home Office Security (FirstPublish 2001) and Your Profitable Home Business (on CD-ROM from Made E-Z Products). Visit his Web site to subscribe to Home Office Success Stories, his free electronic magazine on home business and teleworking.

Computers | BusinessPro

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