Home Networking Basics - Home Networking 101

During the past year we've all had to make big  changes to our lives we've all become accustomed   to doing a large part of our daily routine  such as banking shopping entertainment school   even work online now if you don't want to  do all that stuff on the tiny little screen   of your cell phone that leaves  you at the mercy of one of these one of these maybe one of these possibly some of these and a whole lot of this a whole lot of this and some of that now if you're like most people when the internet  service provider came to your home to set up   all your stuff he walked in to set it all  up handed you his business card and said   hey I'm mike here's my card give us a call if  you need any help and then walk out the door   without explaining how any of that stuff works  now my way of thinking is if I have some equipment   that is my main connection to the civilized  world I want to know something about it I   want to know how to fix it if it breaks I want  to know how to add stuff and make changes to it   later now the wireless router in your home is  an amazing piece of technology it's capable of   allowing you to do much more than just surf  online and talk to your friends on Facebook   the more you know about it and the computers  on your home network the more empowered you can   become in an online world and that's the purpose  of this video series my ebook and my website this is the video compliment to chapter one of  my ebook the home it pro handbook which you can   download for free at wifiguy.net the site that  helps you go from computer novice to home it pro   not that anyone's going to feel  better from looking at my face   but many people prefer video to text now in  this video we're going to discuss the basics   of setting up an awesome home network in your home  by awesome i mean something way better than what   the internet service provider left you with we're  going to discuss all the pieces and parts of your   home internet connection and the special language  they use to communicate with each other if you're   new to networking once you have a brief overview  of these six words you'll have a whole new outlook   on the way the internet works your home network  works and even how the network at your job works   once you have a handle on all that we'll discuss  where to find all these settings on your computer   then we'll discuss how to change all those  settings on your computer in case you want to   troubleshoot or make changes later when you finish  this first video you'll have a firm foundation   you can use to move on to other more interesting  projects such as setting up file sharing setting   up a nas setting up vpn access to your home from  anywhere network printing i p cameras and more   all these projects are covered in detail in the  home it pro handbook it all starts with the modem   the modem brings the signal in from your internet  service provider that can be in the form of a   coaxial cable just like you have with cable  tv it could be a phone-like dsl cable or it   could be a high-speed fiber optic cable the modem  then converts that signal into a digital ethernet   signal that your wireless router can  understand the wireless router is   the most important piece of equipment on your  network it is the brains of your home network   it's actually three devices in one a router an  access point and a switch as a router it allows   the computers on your home network to communicate  with computers on the internet while keeping the   two separate as an access point it uses a wireless  signal to connect all your wireless devices   which allows all them to communicate with each  other and the internet as a switch it has ethernet   ports in the back which allow you to connect your  wired devices with ethernet cable your wireless   router actually serves as an intermediary  between your local network and the internet   for that reason it has two connections one  on the lan side or wide area network side   and another one on the lan or local area network  side the ip address on the internet side is your   public ip address and that's how all computers  on the internet identify your router it also has   a gateway address which is how all the computers  in your internal network recognize the router from   the perspective of the computers on your local  area network the gateway address is their gateway   off of the local area network and onto the  internet the gateway ip address is also the   address that you use to connect to and configure  your wireless router so so far we have the   internet service provider the modem providing  an ethernet connection to the wireless router   we have an ip address for the public side of  your wireless router and we have an iep address   for the private or local area network side now  all the computers and devices on your home network   they need ip addresses to connect as well now  in the land of computer geeks we like to call   all devices such as laptops computers phones  tablets hosts one thing a computer geek does   not want to do is spend a lot of time manually  configuring all the hosts with static ip addresses   one typo can lead to i p address conflicts  and all kinds of problems so what the whiz   bangs in charge of computer world did is they  invented a special protocol which dynamically   or automatically configures all our hosts with ip  addresses and they called it dhcp or dynamic host   configuration protocol so how this works is  when you first connect a device to the network   the first thing that device does is it starts  looking for a dhcp server a dhcp server is a   specific computer that runs a datp service all the  time your wireless router contains a built-in dhcp   server so when that new device thinks it finds a  datp server it goes hey are you a dtp server and   then the dtp server says yes how can i help you  and the computer says well i'd like an ip address   and then the datp server says well i have some ip  addresses do you have a mac address and then the   computer says yes i have a mac address here's my  mac address so then the datp server stores that   mac address in his database and gives the new  computer its own ip address this same process   unfolds the same way with all the other devices on  your home network now if you look closely at the   iep addresses on all the computers on your home  network and the ip address on the wireless router   you'll notice that they look almost identical  the first three sections or octets as we like to   call them are identical the reason for this is  this is how computers identify and communicate   with other devices on their network so for  example if this number here was a one this   computer could not talk to these other computers  because they would be on a different network the   only way computers can talk to computers on a  different network is with the use of a router   and that is what your router does it separates  your home network from the internet and it does   this with a sophisticated protocol called nat or  network address translation so what nat does is it   allows a computer on your home network to talk to  a computer on the internet without exposing your   home computer to the evils of the internet now  an easy way to expand the wired side of your home   network is with the use of a switch now a switch  is a very inexpensive easy to use device however   it's possible to get carried away with these  things a lot of people will start daisy chaining   them and run into problems the electronics  in these devices are not sophisticated enough   to track all the hops from switch to switch to  router to computer to this to that they're just   not capable of doing that sometimes it may work  other times it won't so if you start trying to   daisy chain switches you're liable to end up  with a very frustrating unreliable network so   believe it or not we have already covered five  of the six words we need to learn in this video   the last one is the most important one without  it all the computers on the internet are lost   it's called dns or domain naming system now what  dns does is it matches all the domain names which   are easy for humans to understand to ip addresses  which are easy for computers to understand   it's a lot like the address book on your phone if  you're hungry and you want to order some pizza you   may not even remember the phone number to the  pizza delivery place but you simply pick it out   on your address book and your phone dials the  number and 30 minutes later you have a pizza at   your door well dns works basically the same except  a lot faster you simply type in the address of   your favorite website and your computer has no  idea what the ip address of that website is but   dns servers do so what your computer does is it  looks up where to find its dns server and asks hey   dns where is wifiguy.net and the dns server says  hmm that sounds familiar let me double check   oh yeah wi-fi guy.net that  is ip address 12.45.212.76 so here you go the amazing thing about DNS is not  all DNS servers know where all the IP addresses   and domains are so if it doesn't know it'll  forward your request to another DNS server on   the internet that does this is how the internet  allows you to literally have the entire world   at your fingertips so now that I've got your  head cluttered up with all these crazy words   and acronyms you're probably wondering what  good does all this do me if I can't see it   or do anything with it well that's what  we're going to talk about in the next section I remember when I was in school the  teacher used to get in front of the class   and give us all these words and definitions  that we were supposed to remember   before the test then after the test we never  heard those words again now, in this case,   all the things we've discussed to this point you  will hear again and again the more you dive into   computer networking the more you see them the more  sense it'll make to you before long you'll be able   to troubleshoot computer networking issues  with ease its kind of like riding a bicycle   its kind of awkward at first but after you get  the hang of it it's second nature now any question   that you have about how a computer is set up  on a network can be answered with one simple   command it's called ipconfig now ipconfig  is not some icon on a menu somewhere it's   kind of hidden but once you know how to get to it  it's easy so let's take a look at that right now in this section, we're going to take a closer  look at the ipconfig command so there it is   actually we're going to do more than just look  at it we're going to see what the command can   actually do for us and what it can actually  tell us about our computer's network connections so to get to the command prompt you need  to go down here to type here to search   and enter cmd for command prompt a window opens in the wrong screen so once you  have your command prompt window open it's a simple   matter of just going i p c o n f i g i p config  now you won't have all this stuff that I do on   my computer I have a lot of weird connections on  my computer so basically uh what we're looking for   is this one here the ethernet adapter  okay so right there we can see there's our   IP address here's our subnet mask we don't care  about that and then there's the default gateway   which is the wireless router and  also our gateway to the internet okay so where's all the rest of  it well when you just type in   ipconfig you don't get all of it so what you  want to do is you want to add a little switch which is space forward slash a-l-l all okay then  we get all the information that we're looking for okay so here we are back to our 192.168.1.3 ip  address and there's the default gateway which is   the wireless router dhcp server  that's how we get our ip address also   the wireless router dns servers from looking at  all this we know the basic status of this computer   now this right here the ip4 address when we get  into the troubleshooting section i will show you   how this changes according to your connection  status if you if you have no connection   this number will be different if you have a  connection but it's a dead link it'll look   like something else so simply going ipconfig gives  you a lot of information about how your computer's   connected and what it's connected to now one  thing i want to look at is this the physical   address you get all these numbers and  letters here it looks like the kind of   thing that most people would just want to  ignore well actually this is very important   okay the physical address is the mac address  now if you remember when a device first connects   to the network it asks the dhcp server for an  ip address and then the dhcp server says sure   but you need to give me a mac address well  that's what this is the physical address now what a mac address is it's a series of  letters and numbers and it's a code that's   embedded into the hardware of all devices  that have network connections so whether it's   a computer a printer a laptop a phone anything  with a network connection even a wireless device   has a mac address so that's an important thing  to be aware of and it'll come in handy later   now let's get back to our command prompt while  we're here i want to look at some things here   so now i told you about how this changes  according to the connection state well another   way that you can test the connection we'll get  into this more in the troubleshooting section   is basically uh is something  called a ping which throws a packet   at a device and if the device replies well that  means it's there it's turned on it's all good   okay so let's do a test that with the default  gateway which is also the wireless router so you go down here you go ping and then  we'll try the default gateway 192. 168 to 1.1 and what it'll do is if everything's good  you'll get four replies and then it'll give   you some more statistics as to whether  they all made it and everything's good   okay so that's some stuff we'll talk more about in  the troubleshooting section but that's basically   it that is ipconfig and that is where you go  to see the network connections on your computer things always change and sooner or later you're  going to have to make minor or major changes to   your home network so what are some reasons you  might find yourself wanting to make changes   to your computer network settings an obvious  one would be you find there's an issue on your   network and after some troubleshooting you realize  you need to make some changes another scenario   could be where you take a  computer off of another network   and need to put it onto your network you  have to change the settings on that computer   to make it work on your network in this scenario  we're going to make a small change to one computer   which adds to the functionality of your whole  network let's say you want to run a desktop or   vnc session that allows you to remote control  a specific computer from any other computer   on your network we'll be getting into remote  control in another section but in the meantime   let me give you a quick overview of how vnc  works vnc is a free program that allows you   to take control over other computers on your  home network so for example if you have a main   computer in the living room and you want to  take control over it from the bedroom upstairs   you can do that with a free program called  tight vnc so with tightvnc you simply launch it   type in the ip address of the computer you want to  access remotely click connect type in a password and all of a sudden you're on the other computer  you have total control over this computer   just like you would if you were  sitting right there in the living room now the main thing you got to focus on is if you  want to use the ip address to access that remote   computer if you're using dhcp that ip address  might change and it'll be kind of a hassle   that to run downstairs to see what its new ip  address is and then run back upstairs it kind   of defeats the purpose of the whole thing  so what you can do is you can use a static   iap address on that one computer so it never  changes and then you always remember it in fact,   as a matter of fact, this little thing here  will probably remember it for you as well   so what we want to do is we want to change  the dhcp setting to static and then put a   static ip address on that computer well i'm  not going to run over that computer now we'll   so we'll just pretend like this computer  here is that computer so to make changes   to that computer what we do is we go to the  network adapter or ethernet adapter settings of   that computer so we go to the same place we went  before but instead of typing in cmd we type in ethernet then we go to ethernet settings when it comes to changing network settings on your  computer this is basically where you want to go   so, in this case, we're going to make changes  to the adapter settings we're going to assign   a specific IP address to this network card okay  so to do that you go to change adapter options   and you'll see all the different network  connections you have on your computer you'll   see the wi-fi connections you'll see another wi-fi  connection say you have a USB network connection   again my case I have a Nord VPN so  that's here in case I want to use that,   okay i also run hyper-v which is a virtual  machine so if that's the case you'll have   a network connection for that so we're not  interested in all those in this particular one   we're interested in this ethernet connection  here so you simply highlight it and we invoke   the all-powerful right-click function of  your mouse so now we've got all these little   things we can look at here okay so now if  you wanted to you could click on disable and now this computer no longer   has a network connection so then you would  simply right-click on it and go enable the ones we want to focus on most are status and  properties if you click on status it pulls up all   kinds of interesting information and statistics  about that particular connection if you look   down here you can see a display of actual packets  that are sent and received by your network card   as long as you see movement down here  you know something's working right   if you click on details what do you get you get  almost the exact same information you get from   ipconfig at the command prompt now in our case  what we want to do is we want to go to properties   properties is where all the cool stuff is  now in this case we really don't want to get   involved with all this other stuff we want  to focus on internet protocol version four   highlight it and go to properties okay so now we  have a place where we can actually make changes   to the ip settings on this network card so right  now it's set to obtain an ip address automatically   and obtain a dns server address automatically   so if we want to say hey we want a specific ip  address on this computer we would simply go use   the following ip address let's say we want to call  this network card 15 so we would simply go 192 1 you have to hit the period here dot 115. you  hit the tab and it'll automatically fill in   the subnet mask. subnet masking is a very deep  subject which on home networks you don't really   have to get involved with too much the default  gateway what's that going to be well we already   know what that's going to be that's our wireless  router 192. 168. 1.1 you go okay you go close and then you go to details which is just like  going ipconfig your IP address has been changed   to 15. okay now that was just for demonstration  purposes so let's go back and turn it back to DHCP   so to set it back to DHCP go back to internet  protocol go to properties and then simply click on   that and it deletes all that stuff put it back and  it should go hey DHCP server do you still remember   my DHCP address and the DHCP server will go yes  that's okay don't worry about it it's still free   so you go to details and boom you're still back to  three so the way that works is it's called a lease   which means the DHCP is going to remember your IP  address for one day for you so that right there   is the basics of changing the  network settings on your computer Thank you

Channel: WiFi Guy

Views: 4,143

Keywords: home networking 101, home networking low budget, home network setup 2021, home networking, home network setup, wireless router setup, ethernet switch, ethernet, home networking explained, home networking tips, home networking guide, home network, how to set up a home network, home server, networking, router, switch, wireless internet, how to setup network, access point, understand home networking, home networking tutorial, isp, home networking basics

Id: m4uzeX-ChFw

Length: 26min 29sec (1589 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 11 2021