Specifications

1
1 Overview
In mid 1998 I set up a home LAN. I was starting a consulting business and wanted to learn more about the
issues involved in building and operating a Small Office Home Office (SOHO) LAN. Until that time my
networking experience was limited to interactions with the corporate Information Technology (IT)
department.
The LAN has undergone significant evolution over time. It started out with a few 10 BaseT Ethernet drops.
It has expanded to encompass the entire house and home office and been upgraded to 100 BaseT. DSL is
the primary Internet connection dialup being reserved for backup. Initially we used Wingate for Internet
sharing and BlackIce Defender for intrusion detection running a dedicated laptop. The laptop has been
replaced with a Multitech Broadband Router. A recycled desktop now serves as a poor mans server. This
runs the timeserver, local web server, and file shares. Network printing is done with a dedicated HP print
server. Desktop PCs normally require a dedicated monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Instead we opted to use a
Belkin KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switchbox. This allows a single keyboard, mouse and monitor to be
shared by multiple computers.
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) enables telecommuting between home and corporate network. The VPN
encrypts data between the home and the corporate network providing a secure channel over the public
Internet. As is typical with all things networking installation and debug was accomplished with some
difficulty. However, once properly implemented the VPN has operated flawlessly.
Traveling with a PC laptop presents problems, as network configuration differs at each location. Luckily a
utility called NetSwitcher simplifies this task providing one click switching between locations.
File backup was finally addressed. We chose Second Copy 2000. It is configured to automatically backup
several client profiles to the file server.
This paper is not intended as a competitive product review. The field is constantly changing; any attempt to
do so is quickly outdated. Rather, it discusses how specific requirements were addressed and implemented.
For up to date reviews of networking hardware and software the reader is directed to the many publications
and web articles on the subject. The products and services described in this paper represent my choices to
deliver the features I needed.
Goals for SOHO network:
Share single Internet DSL connection
Automatic fail over to Dialup if DSL fails
Printer and scanner sharing
File sharing
Local private web server
VPN access to corporate network
Access to multiple e-mail accounts
Access to USENET newsgroups
Fax without a fax machine
Automatic time synchronization
Automatic file backups
Learn networking
The drawing on the next page shows the entire environment; phone service and data network for both
business and personal use.