A "Home" Guide to...
Networking
by D!ck
You've got a PC, so have all your friends, you play all the latest games
but getting them onto your harddisk is a right royal pain in the
posterior, and one you do, you play them for ages and eventually run out
of things to do with it, so you delete it.
If you or your mates have a car and don't mind a bit of lugging about
and extra expenditure, you should think about setting up a network on
your computers. In the past this was the province of large companies
who wanted to be able to share resources etc, and the home user never
thought he's see the day when he'd need one for himself.
These days however, everyone who is even semi-serious about their PC
should have a network card of some description installed in their
machine, all the people I regularly swap and play games with have one,
and like other hardware that you've had for a while, I would hate to
have to make do without my card, life just wouldn't be the same.
Which One?
As usual with the PC, there are chigloads of cards to chose from, and if
you don't know what you want then you won't know what to buy or even
where to look for it. Pick up a copy of PC Mart and have a look through
the adverts under Networking, you are looking for prices for the
following items:
NE2000 or compatible ISA or PCI card
T-Piece and Terminator
Cable
ISA is slower and therefore cheaper than PCI, and that's what we all
use. One thing to note is that PCI cards will talk to ISA cards and
vice-versa, some people have expressed confusion over this point, it's
basically an interface, and it's the card that does the work, not the
interface it's on.
As usual you should count the slots in your machine and determine that
you do in fact have a free ISA slot, if not then you'll need to get a
PCI card instead, and if you don't have *any* free slots, then your
machine is massively crammed full and you should think about getting a
whole new motherboard (with more slots!!).
Is that like a NMC?
We all remember Null Modem Cables (NMC) from our Amiga days (indeed, see
the guide in this issue for how to make one for your PC from two dead
mice), they are set up in the following fashion:
Amiga Amiga
| |
`----------------'
This allowed you to play against another human player on a completely
seperate machine, games such as Populos, Knights of the Sky and Stunt
Car Racer gave you a whole new (usually harder) playing experience
thanks to this one piece of cable, but the limitation was that you could
only link up two machines.
In a Local Area Network (LAN), the machines are arranged as follows:
PC1 PC2 PC3 PC4 PC5
| | | | |
=^------------^-----------^-----------^-----------^=
Each PC has a T-Piece, represented above by the "^" character, joining
it into the network, the PC's are arranged in a line, which of course
can bend all through the building, it really doesn't matter, the cable
("---", above) is pretty flexible and can be coiled for neatness.
The "=" represents a Terminator, and one of these has to appear at each
end of the line. The explanation I have been given for this is that the
signal that runs along the cable must have an end to bounce off and so
come back down the cable. Why this "end" cannot be another machine is
beyond me, it just is.
Therefore, in order to be ready for any eventuality network-wise, it is
advisable for everyone who gets a card to buy a T-Piece, Terminator and
a cable as well, even though a network always requires one less piece of
cable than there are machines, and only two machines, no matter how many
there are, will require terminators.
Games Benefits
More and more PC Games these days support Networking, not just LAN
networks but Direct Connection, Modem and Internet play as well. LAN is
by far the fastest of all the connection methods, and you can even play
with someone across the road if you don't mind stretching the cable a
bit, making it possible for entire streets to be networked up, although
I have yet to hear of anyone doing this! And of course, LAN means you
don't have to pay BT anything... :)
The most obvious benefit is the number of players, with Quake - the best
network game ever (being the one that *everyone* plays eventually, like
buying Brothers in Arms on CD) - supporting up to 16 players either on
their own, cooperatively, or in teams, vast gaming experiences are just
around the corner, there's a 5-player Deathmatch at my house tomorrow,
but you won't read this until a month afterwards.
More and more games are being written just for networking, with a
one-player game thrown in for good measure. Quake is, in actual fact, a
Network ONLY game, when you play it in single player mode it is simply
sending network messages between memory buffers instead of down a cable.
System Benefits
The major upshot is the fact that every other machine on the network is
available to you as if it were a drive on your machine. Just a couple
of mouse clicks will open up someone else's C drive and you can copy
from (or to, if they've given you permission) it at your leisure.
The speed is quite amazing as well, most cards (at least that we've
seen) are 10mB, no that's not 10 Megabytes, it's 10 MegaBITS, there are
8mB to a Mb, so 10mB = 1.25Mb a SECOND! Yes that's right, on a basic
LAN setup (assuming noone else is copying or playing over the network at
the time) you can achieve copying speeds of around a Meg a second.
The other Games advantage that you may not have spotted is that, because
of this vast bandwidth availability, you can run incredibly complicated
games that involve lots of numbers being passed between machines, and
you won't have to wait for that information to reach you. This means
lags that made games like Battlechess so strange will all but disappear,
and only in the most crowded Quakefest will you notice them.
OK, How much?
Ooh, the big question, how much? If you saw my two letters on Digitiser
recently (two letters in one day, who else has managed that?) then you
will already know the answer. You can pick up an ISA card, with T-Piece
and Terminator for, gasp...
£25!
Well, I know I can, and that's from a shop, not mail order. Flicking
through PC Mark we see the following advert:
Database Office Supplies: NE2000 pnp ISA - £18.80 (inc VAT)
This is a typical price, I have seen them cheaper and I have seen them
costing more. Remember that this does not include a Cable, T-Piece or
Terminator, add maybe 3-5 for the metal, the Cable depends on how much
you want, and remember that you'll have to put delivery on top of that
as well.
I can certainly get you everything you want for a PC for under £30, and
that's with a good 5m cable, which is considered long enough for those
times when you can't sit someone's computer next you, what's more, that
probably INCLUDES delivery! If you'd like me to get you the latest
prices (From my local hardware sales/repair store) then E-Mail me, I am
in the directory.
My charge? You pay any postage costs (minimal if you use E-Mail) and if
I don't know you, I ask for payment in advance, that's all, I don't want
any money out if it! This could actually end up cheaper because I don't
use courier delivery at £10+vat a time, but registered, saving about £5.
Read up on Networking before you decide what to do, as the software
installation can sometimes be a pain, especially as you need another
machine with a network card already working in it to test it out! Speak
to your friends, do they own cars? Are they bored with 1-player Quake?
See if they're interested, and if so, go for it!
(By the way, the Deathmatch lasted for 7 hours and we were beaten 174 to
168, the gits :(
D!ck
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