The table below compares the four home networking technologies described previously, identifying some of the important factors to consider in selecting a solution: Phoneline Powerline Ethernet Wireless Speed 100 Kbit/s - 10 Mbit/s 50 Kbit/s - 350 … [Read more...]

As with the others, the technology for wireless networks has also been around for some time, achieving a measure of success during the late 1990s in a number of vertical markets, including health-care, retail and manufacturing. Home networking … [Read more...]

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ratified the original 802.11 specification in 1997 as the standard for WLANs. That version of 802.11 provided for 1 Mbit/s and 2 Mbit/s data rates and a set of fundamental signalling … [Read more...]

Powerline networking is another technology to take advantage of unused bandwidth on an existing system of home circuitry. It operates similarly to a phoneline network. Internal or external network adapters are installed in each PC, which are … [Read more...]

Phoneline networking takes advantage of unused transmission capacity to transmit data over existing telephone wires. They transmit information at frequencies well above that of plain old telephone service (POTS) or digital services like ISDN … [Read more...]

To adapt the technology for the consumer market, Ethernet home network vendors have designed networking kits - consisting of low-cost network adapters, an inexpensive non-managed hub and simple configuration software - to make the technology easier to … [Read more...]

With the price of PCs falling at the same time the advantages for consumers to being connected - online investing and shopping, keeping in touch with long-distance friends and relatives, enjoying multiplayer games and tapping the vast resources of … [Read more...]

In 1985, the Computer Communications Industry Association (CCIA) requested the Electronic Industries Association (EIA) to develop a generic cabling standard for commercial buildings that would be capable of running all current … [Read more...]

Transceivers are used to connect nodes to the various Ethernet media. Most computers and network interface cards contain a built-in 10BaseT or 10Base2 transceiver, allowing them to be connected directly to Ethernet without requiring an external … [Read more...]

LAN switches are an expansion of the concept in LAN bridging. They operate at Layer 2 (link layer) of the OSI reference model, which controls data flow, handles transmission errors, provides physical (as opposed to logical) addressing, and manages … [Read more...]