The object of this article is to inform those who are new to computers of the basics of the ethernet connection.

Every computer has an ethernet port, except some of the older models with a Pentium 1 processor, or before, and it’s currently the fastest connection on your computer, capable of speeds between 10 megabits per second, (10 million 1s and zeros/second.) and, in some cases, up to 1 gigabit per second. (1 billion 1s and zeros/second.) – That’s quite speedy data transfer: In reality that means it’s capable of transferring over 10 megabytes of data per second.

Internet speeds, such as those in the UK, don’t allow anything like that much data to be transferred over the internet via an ethernet-connected modem. A home network, (Also known as a Local Area Network, or LAN.) on the other hand, can benefit from such fast data transfer speeds; transferring data between computers rather quickly.

How to Recognise an Ethernet Port

An ethernet port is pictured below. The yellow arrow points to it: -

You’ll usually find it on the back of a computer, along with a number of USB ports, sound jacks, and various other connections.

The plug that plugs into an ethernet port looks like this: -

Please excuse the bad focus. The plug is officially designated as an RJ45 plug.

With this connection you can create a high-speed data connection between computers; usually via a router, which also interfaces your home network with the internet.

- ‘Excuse the weird title: It was too long if I used anything else.

If you’ve ever set up a home network, you’ll notice that the first place you get access to is the Shared Documents folder on the other computer. You don’t get access to anything else on the other computer by by default; but you can access all drives on the other computer, including most of the files and folders on them, by setting permissions.

How to set permissions:

Click on My Computer. Right-click a drive that you want to share on the network and click “Sharing and Security”. Click the “Sharing” tab and look in the “Network sharing and security” section in the middle of the box. Check “Share this folder on the network” to allow the drive to be shared on the network. (You might find that you have to set permissions on some of the sub-folders too before you can access them from another computer.) Check “Allow network users to change my files” if you want to be able to alter anything from another computer; otherwise you’ll only be able to read files. (Remember that anyone using the other computer will be able to get into that computer and change anything that has sharing permissions.)

If you have a peripheral device attached to your computer, and you have files and folders on it that you need to transfer across the network, you might run into a problem: You may be able to set permissions for that device; but chances are that the other computer may not be able to see your device; no matter how big it is.

Sometimes there’s no problem, and the other computer sees the device, lists it, and transfers happily. – But Windows can be a bit unpredictable as far as a network is concerned: -

For instance; if I set up my external USB hard-drive on my old computer, my newer computer can’t see it at all: It only sees the internal SATA-connected drives, C:, D:, and F:. If, however, I set up my USB hard-drive on my newer computer. then my older computer sees it and can transfer straight to it without a problem: It all depends on the hardware used, as well as how the motherboard is constructed, among other things.

There are a number of ways round the problem: I could copy everything I wanted to transfer to an internal drive, say F:, but that’s hassle, I might not have enough space on F:, and I’d probably have to erase it all again afterwards even if I had enough space. = Wear on the drive and time unnecessarily taken for a somewhat pointless exercise. _ But I can still transfer the files straight from my external USB drive on my older computer to my newer computer, even though my newer computer can’t see the drive. Here’s how: -

My older computer can see my newer computer, and vice-versa. That’s all it takes: A little manual exercise will sort the problem out. Let me explain: I find my external USB drive in “My Computer” on my older computer; Drive J: in this instance, and I also find the drive on my newer computer that I want to transfer the files and folders to in “My Network Places” on my older computer.

Now I select the files and folders that I want to transfer from the place they’re stored on my newer computer via “My Network Places” and drag them to my external hard-drive in “My Computer”>J:  It’s just a matter of dragging between windows.

Transfer starts; target neutralised.

It’ll also work with most peripheral devices like digital cameras, mp3 players, USB sticks. I’ve never managed to get it to work with a webcam though. – But that’s streaming rather than storage; so it’s a different kettle of fish. Oftentimes it works otherwise.

(I’ve yet to meet anybody who keeps fish in a kettle, or come to that, a different kettle.)

Have you tried this? (No; not keeping fish in a kettle silly; I meant the other thing with the network.) Did it work? Did you need to do it? Do you disagree with me? Please comment below.

(To set up a network you need to have either a patch lead between two computers, or network them through a router or switch by means of a wireless connection and/or a wired ethernet connection. Simply setting the file permissions alone will not network computers together. Use the Network Setup Wizard (NetSetWiz) in XP to accomplish this having connected the computers.)

Preamble

Most routers connect to the internet on one side, and to the computer by means of the IEEE ethernet port via a cat 5 cable. The router may connect the same way to other devices also possibly; such as other computer(s) maybe, and/or a NAS server perhaps. This is known as a LAN (Local Area Network).

To set up a network it’s not just a simple matter of connecting up and everything works hunky-dory though: The network settings have to be correct inside each device in order that it knows where everything else is. With Windows XP Microsoft have simplified this operation with the Network Setup Wizard, or "NetSetWiz" as I refer to it. Without going into all the complicated technical details, you run the NetSetWiz on all computers and other devices using Windows, after having correctly connected up your network, and it sets up each device to interact with the other devices running Windows.

Even though the NetSetWiz didn’t appear until XP was released; it’ll work on pretty much any version of Windows in use today. Microsoft have done a fairly good job as regards this wizard with backwards compatibility.

Inevitably, though, there are times when things break down, and it doesn’t seem to work quite as it should.

Even when using just a single router with a single computer, which doesn’t usually require any assistance from the NetSetWiz, there can be communication problems occurring between router and computer.

I’m writing this article mainly because I notice that I’m getting a larger than usual number of visitors who’ve been searching Google with a term similar to "BT Home Hub doesn’t connect with computer" or "Computer can’t see BT Home Hub". I have quite a few references to the BT Home Hub on this blog, which is why Google refers it to the visitors; but not a lot if anything as regards troubleshooting.

Guts

So you’ve connected the BT Home Hub as BT suggest: Filter at or near the BT socket with telephone and computer connections running from it; the cable connected from the filter to your BT Home Hub. The power adapter plugged in to a live 13 Amp socket, and the low-voltage output lead connected to the power input of your Home Hub.

(*Note: The recent BT Home Hubs; 2.0 and above, require a working voltage of 15 Volts. The older BT Home Hubs, before 2.0 require a working voltage of 9 Volts: Therefore if you’re replacing an old Home Hub with a new 2.0 or greater, you would probably have problems with it, if it works at all, if you don’t use the power adapter supplied with it and use the old one instead. (I don’t advise using the new adapter with an old Home Hub; although it may or may not work as a temporary measure. (Then again it might damage the old Home Hub due to over-voltage – I don’t know and I don’t intend to experiment in this area.)))

You power everything up and – No internet connection.

First check that the top three lights on the Hub are lit up and are blue. If not then refer to the documentation supplied with the Hub. If yes then check the cat 5 cable connection between the router and the computer. (Unless you’re using a wireless connection.)

If there’s nothing wrong with that, check that your ethernet adapter is working properly and has a driver or the correct driver installed. You can do this in Device Manager. If a yellow mark with an ! is attached to your ethernet adapter’s icon in Device Manager, I suggest you right-click on the icon in question and remove the device from the list. Following that click "Actions" at the top of the Device Manager page and "Scan for hardware changes". The computer will see the device and add it back to the list, then it’ll look for and install the driver again. When it has done this the ! should vanish and the ethernet controller should work correctly. If not then you have a problem with the driver that you are using and need to get a new driver from the motherboard’s manufacturer or the manufacturer of your ethernet controller.

If everything is OK so far but you still can’t connect to the internet then there may be a TCP/IP error in that your Home Hub has assigned your ethernet controller an invalid IP address. To solve this you can either reboot both the computer and the Home Hub, or to save rebooting the computer you could go to a command prompt and type in "ipconfig /flushDNS": (Note the space between ipconfig and /flushdns.) This will empty your DNS cache where the invalid IP address has been stored, and the Hub will hopefully assign a new, correct IP address when it reboots.

There was a typo in the above paragraph previous to 27th November 2008, for which I apologise.

Going this far should have sorted all but a tiny percentage of problems. if you’re still having problems I suggest that you refer to the documentation that was supplied with the Hume Hub, or phone BT themselves on 0800 800 150. Unfortunately their call-centre is in India, half of their representatives are totally computer-illiterate and are reading from a script, and a lot of them have such strong Indian accents that they’re rather hard to understand. Some of them also have no intelligence to speak of.

If you are replacing an old BT Home Hub with a new model 2.0 or greater then it should be possible to plug it straight in  to the existing connections as before, remembering to swap the old 9V power adapter for the new 15V power adapter.

It is quite possible to run your BT Home Hub without using any of BT’s software. I suggest that you don’t install the Norton Security Suite provided with the Home Hub as this is bloatware. Use something else instead with equivalent function. See this article on an alternative antivirus/antispyware solution.

I also suggest that you might like to not install the BT Broadband Desktop help client unless you are computer-illiterate: The reason being is that some antispyware vendors consider the BT Broadband Desktop Help client as spyware/malware, and the Home Hub will work perfectly well without it being installed. If you don’t know much or anything about computers, or are a technophobe, then I suggest that you do install the client.

The wireless connection manager software provided by BT is a waste of space IMO, and sometimes conflicts with the Windows equivalent – which is all you need. I suggest if you can that you totally disable the BT wireless connection manager and use the equivalent built into the operating system instead.

Please comment on this article and give your views and suggestions.

Addendum

I’ve had a few enquiries about the BT Home Hub from Google that I feel I should just mention:

First: Should I leave my BT Home Hub switched on all the time?

Yes and no: I would suggest that you don’t leave it on 24/7 week in, week out. Give it a few hours’ break now and again, otherwise it gets funny at times. Other than that I’d say yes; use it to your heart’s content: If you want to go up and watch whatever on the computer in your bedroom then doze off and leave the Hub on all night why not? It doesn’t use much power, and if you’re worried about someone hacking your wireless while you sleep you could set it to switch wireless off at a certain time. Also it updates at night sometimes: Around 1AM time: Whatever you do; don’t switch it off while it’s updating or it’ll never work again. Read your handbook.

If you have questions about using certain services with it then you can use pretty much any service with it: DSL, TCP/IP, FTP, HTTP, Peer-to-peer, (Watch out though: I happen to know that BT have set up sensitive equipment, set up to record illegal file downloaders’ IPs; so if you do it via BT you’ll probably get caught. I realise that not all P-P involves illegal downloads; and that there’s also a highly ethical side to it: Just to let you know that you’re being watched by electronic eyes.) but you’ll need to set it properly in some cases: Refer to the handbook that was packed with it when it arrived.

If you have a question then why not scrawl it on the wall in the sidebar? It might as well be used.

…And I’ll add a little more to the above:-

Your BT Home hub doesn’t have to be connected to your computer by wires – You can connect wirelessly: How secure is this? The Home Hub 2.0 has a secure wireless connection using 256-bit encryption. (Older models use 128-bit encryption and less-secure wireless protocol by default. Those models require settings to be altered to enhance security. 2.0 upwards are inherantly more secure by default and require no setting to become so.) Connecting is a synch: First you’ll have to have either a wireless card fitted via a PCI slot inside your computer, or you can use an external USB wireless dongle.

You’ll also need your BT Home Hub’s wireless key; which is printed on a card that was delivered inside the Hub’s packaging with the rest of the paperwork. There is a space in the instruction booklet to write this into, which is useful if like me you lose the card.

I won’t go into graphic detail about the process. Simply either set up your wireless connection, via your computer’s internal wireless card if it has one, using the software built into the Windows operating system (XP or Vista.)(I don’t recommend using Windows 9x: It’s old, insecure, and problematic. If you are using Win 9x then get a better operating system.)(Linux and Mac users refer to your operating system’s documentation.) or plug your wireless USB dongle into a USB socket on your computer and set up the connection using the software built into the (Windows, Linux, Mac) operating system.

The BT Home Hub 2.0 has an internal antenna and will connect to your computer via a wireless connection within most properties. If your property is so big that it’s out of range then you can probably afford a second BT Home Hub anyway. If you can’t get a signal due to a blamk-spot then you’ll have to move your computer to a different location.

Being a geekette; that is a female computer designer/builder, as well as a blogger, I often get asked by my girlfriends (And some of their boyfriends too – Shh!) to pop over for a cuppa and attend to some problem they’re having with their computer. Most of these problems turn out to be software-related, so it’s always a good idea to come prepared – Although I can download most of what I need from the internet, sometimes their internet connection is not working for whatever reason, and more than one is on dial-up – Which can make downloading a program a 2-hour job in itself.

To combat this I have a 1Gb USB flash drive with most of anything I might need on it; plus loads of links to anything useful on the internet itself that might be useful which I haven’t bothered to include because I probably won’t need it.

A Topless and Bottomless Photo of Me

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I pop the cord from which the USB stick hangs around my neck, and go to sort out their issues.

I mainly have program installers in the form of .exe files on the USB drive: These are always useful. I also am able, in a worst-case scenario, to provide them with a temporary internet connection via my mobile device, for which I also carry a USB bluetooth dongle to plug into their computer on the rare occasions where it is necessary; such as an instance a year plus ago where a friend somehow lost the driver for their network interface device and was unable to communicate with their router as a result: I removed the old driver which was faulty but obviously didn’t have that particular driver on the USB device; so I set up a temporary internet connection via my mobile phone/bluetooth and downloaded a new driver, installed it – Target neutralised.

The items I have on my USB drive are listed below: I’m sharing this with you as I’m assuming that as a geek you too get called out to similar situations; but being unable to fix it on the spot you end up taking their computer home, doing the work in your spare time, and returning their computer at a later date; which causes inconvenience to both parties.

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The files I carry around on my USB device are as follows:

1. AVG Anti-virus.exe installer: You’d be mightily surprised how many people don’t run an anti-virus program! They might find that their computer slows down with use; and, not realising that it is caused by the registry getting cluttered with crap among other things, they start removing programs which they think are unnecessary in order to attempt to get the machine to speed up again, one of those “unnecessary” programs being their anti-virus program.

2.. A free anti-spyware program; such as AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy – For the reason stated above or that they didn’t even know what spyware was etc. The latest AVG antivirus has built-in spyware-protection, but that protection is not exhaustive, so it’s always a good idea to install extra spyware protection supplemental to that.

3. Free FTP clients in .exe installer format, such as WS-FTP-LE and FileZilla: They do occasionally come in handy.

4. Diagnostic programs; such as Core Temp.exe, Diskcheckup.exe… I know; rather than listing them all here I’ll show a picture of all the icons below and to save a lot of my time I’ll let you Google for them all.

Obviously the folders are of my own making: Batch Files contains some useful batch files that I wrote or copied, Dragons Websites contains the URLs of the websites of the millionaire entrepreneurs from the BBC series “Dragon’s Den”, Glint(Program) contains the .exe file of the Glint System Monitor program, KK contains pictures which I use regarding Kustom Komputa; Suppliers, Parts, and Circuits contains URLs to suppliers of computer hardware components, plus a few electronic circuits, Web Shortcuts contains hundreds of various useful URLs, Websites contains copies of all my website files from some of my various sites, WP Plugins contains some useful WordPress plugins. Some of the files, such as DSC00* are photos from my mobile phone. aports.zip shouldn’t be on there as it’s a program that contains malware. OEM Exel and OEM INXP are folders containing branding files which I add to the OS to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer. The file “Kustom Komputa” is a copy of some files from my Kustom Komputa website. WP Themes contains WordPress themes. The Folder “Self-Installing Scr” contains a number of screensavers that I created and which automatically install on the computer upon activation of the .exe file thereof. (No malware involved.) The folder Paint.net contains the program Paint.net, and the folder “Sounds” contains some alternative Windows sound effects as spoken by the Daleks from the BBC TV series “Dr Who”.

There are also a number of shortcuts which you don’t normally see on any Windows desktop. These shortcuts; such as “Sound Recorder“, “Volume Control“, “Command Prompt“, “Device Manager“, and “Sleep or Hibernate” are described on this site, including the method to create your very own icon(s).

So that’s pretty much it: Carry this lot plus your own personal files around on a USB flash drive and you won’t go far wrong.

HTH (‘Hope That Helps.)

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