Living with a

Small Office Home Office (SOHO)

 Network

 

2008 Edition

 

Tom Schmidt

Schmidt Consulting

Revised 12 January 2008

tom@tschmidt.com

http://www.tschmidt.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract

This paper discusses our experience setting up and using a small office home office (SOHO) network over a number of years. It offers guidance on selecting a high-speed Internet Service Provider (ISP), presents Local Area Network (LAN) options, describes Internet sharing methods, and discusses typical network services.

 

 Internet access is via 1500/384 Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), provided by the local Telephone Company. A NAT router enables multiple computers to share the connection. Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) switched LAN provides high-speed internal communication. LAN services include:  file backup, network printing, NNTP timeserver, DNS server, Syslog log file server and local private web server.

 

A local hosting service hosts our business web server and e-mail. Use of a Hosting service moves web site traffic off the broadband connection. It also significantly eases task of securing local network.

 

After several years of minimal change we have gone through major revamping this year replacing just about everything except wiring.

 

 

 

 


Table of Contents

1     Overview... 1

2     Internet – Much More Than World Wide Web.. 3

2.1      ISP. 3

2.2      Services. 3

2.3      Latency vs Speed.. 3

2.4      Naming Convention.. 3

2.4.1       Domain Name Service (DNS). 4

2.5      Routing.. 4

2.6      Multicast.. 4

2.7      Quality of Service (QoS) 4

2.8      TCP Slow Start – Receive Window – et al. 4

2.9      IP Address. 4

2.9.1       Dotted-Decimal Notation. 5

2.9.2       Subnet 5

2.9.3       Class vs Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR). 5

2.9.4       Port Number. 5

2.9.5       Private Address Block. 5

2.9.6       AutoIP Address Block. 6

2.9.7       Local Host Address. 6

2.9.8       Multicast Address Block. 6

2.9.9       Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). 6

2.10     Terminology.. 6

3     Local Area Network (LAN) – Networking for Everyone. 9

3.1      Ethernet.. 9

3.1.1       Media Access Controller (MAC) Address. 9

3.1.2       Virtual LAN (VLAN). 9

3.1.3       Universal Plug and Play. 9

3.2      Wired Ethernet.. 9

3.2.1       10  – 100 – 1,000 – 10,000 – 100,000