December 8, 1997
Personal networks
By Bob O'Donnell
Buying a new computer this year for Christmas, or adding one of the new handheld PCs to
your computing tools? If so, a personal network may be something for you.
Increasingly, people don't just use one computer; more and more of us have a work and
pleasure system, or a desktop and a notebook. Sharing devices, such as printers, scanners,
and storage devices, can become cumbersome with all these disconnected systems. Then there
are all the issues related to getting on-line -- modems, separate Internet addresses, and
so on.
That's when a personal network makes sense -- and it isn't all that expensive or
difficult to do. Market forces have pushed the prices for Ethernet-based network interface
cards and hubs down -- I've seen ISA and PCI cards for $20 or $30 and five-port hubs for
less than $50. Even PC Card Ethernet adapters can now be had for less than $75. Better
still, lots of mainstream networking companies, such as 3Com, LinkSys and Bay Networks, are starting to offer Network
Starter packages for around $100 that bundle a few network cards and a hub for the
burgeoning small office/home office (SOHO) network market.
Ethernet-equipped peripherals, such as printers and modems as well as Ethernet adapters
for those devices, still tend to be expensive, but the peer-to-peer networking and
resource sharing built into Windows 95 and Mac OS8, for example, make it easy to share
"nonnetworked" printers among multiple machines. Also, some peripherals, such as
scanners, are now coming bundled with applications that allow them to be shared over a
network without requiring any specialized hardware.
Virtually all operating systems, even the new version of Windows CE 2.0, include basic
networking support. So in many cases you can simply plug the various computing devices you
own together -- or take advantage of the growing support for infrared connectivity -- and
you'll have an instant network.
If you have more sophisticated needs and want to investigate other software solutions,
several choices are now available for both the home and small office market. The latest
versions of Artisoft's venerable Lantastic
and Miramar Systems' PC MacLAN,
for example, let you put together small (or large) heterogeneous networks that mix
multiple operating systems. Artisoft's
i.Share lets small networks share a single Internet account.
Another interesting choice for Windows 95-only networks is Mango's Medley 97, which lets you pool the
available disk space on up to 25 machines and use it as a single, fault-tolerant virtual
server without needing to install a NOS on any of them. Best of all, this
"shared" drive simply shows up and can be treated as another hard drive on each
end-user's machine. Mango recently announced a licensing deal with LinkSys that will
bundle a two-user version of Medley with LinkSys' various network starter kits -- which
sounds like a great deal for personal and small business networks.
I'm still waiting for a product that can pool the processing power of all the various
machines connected to a network -- but with higher-speed network connections becoming more
commonplace, it may not be that far off.
Dreams aside, the fact is that if you own several machines, there's never been a better
time to create a personal network of your own.
©
Copyright 1997, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
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