Building a home network is easy and fun to do. We are starting off with a personal computer (PC) tower, three laptops, one laser printer and one photo printer. For starters you will need to have an internet connection. If you network is going to support four computer you should start off with a wireless router, most home wireless router have switches built right into them. From the wireless router you will hard line with CAT 5e, you PC and laser printer assuming you printer has a NIC card if you printer does not have a NIC card, then you can plug in directly into your PC via USB. Photo printer does not usually come with a NIC card so you will also have to plug it directly into your PC.
Now that every thing is plugged in it is time for the networking part. For this type of network with, and the need to share resources I would not recommend DHCP, I like static IP address. That way I can always know what IP address are in use and I can make my router only use the IP address I assign static through it, and it make your network more secure.
Then sharing resources on a home network such as videos and music files between computers. You as the network administrator have to make sure that the file folders that you want to share are shared on each computer you want to see the video and music files. Because if the folders are not shared the other computers will not be able to see them or use the files.
Now you need to secure your computer, as I mentioned above I like using static IP addresses. Reason for using static an IP addresses, because through your wireless router you can restrict access to your home network to just you the IP addresses you put in your router. You also need virus protection, the average time it takes for a computer to get a virus they on the internet is five minutes. If you would like to access your computer remotely, there are a lot of programs. You can set up a DMZ and use VPN; you can also use a free program called...