The problem was how to get the network to another floor in the dwelling without tearing everything up to put in Ethernet. Broadband access comes into the first floor of the dwelling and there are computers on that floor that can make use of it. However, there are also other computers on the second floor that need to have access.

Just a year ago, the only way to supply service to the second floor was to string CAT-5 cable across the house, generally frowned upon by the spouse, or to run cable through walls – a major undertaking. With the availability of the home phone standard, it is now possible to use existing telephone wiring to transport the network content. Most homes have phone service at various points in the house. These points now become network nodes.

The home phone standard permits a reasonable network speed (10 MHz) – especially since it is still faster than most consumer broadband access (1 MHz). The home phone standard is engineered so that the data transport will not interfere with telephone traffic and the telephone traffic will not interfere with the data transport. The question remaining is what equipment is needed and what equipment will work together. Of course, in selecting equipment, one wants to inspect the manufacturer’s certifications that the equipment is compliant with the standards. I chose the following:

Linksys HPR0200 router (about $150.00)
This router comes with a WAN port for the incoming broadband, an Ethernet port to feed output to a LAN, and a home phone HPNA connection that connects to the phone wall outlet. The WAN port accepts Ethernet from the broadband modem. In my case, the Ethernet port is connected directly to the computer located on the first floor. The HPNA port passes network traffic into the phone wiring. The router also has a telephone connection where I can connect the phone that used to connect to the wall outlet. This phone jack on the router has filters to block interference. It is especially nice to note that no other filters are required for the other phone outlets. This is different from DSL, which requires filters for each phone that shares the DSL line.

The router has a switch used to switch between crossover mode and straight-through mode. When connecting the router to a hub uplink port or a computer, set the switch in crossover mode. This router also contains a couple of key network features that make this arrangement work so well: a firewall and a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol server. The DHCP server issues private IP addresses to each computer that comes on to the network. The firewall provides network address translation—translating your private IP addresses to addresses that will be accepted by the Internet. The firewall also supports port filtering, IP filtering, and MAC filtering.

Netgear PE 102 HPNA to Ethernet Bridge (about $150.00)
This device has a port to connect it to a phone outlet whereby it picks up the network traffic placed on the phone system by the Linksys router. Of course, it is a two-way port that sends network traffic back through the phone system as well. It has an Ethernet port that delivers Ethernet traffic to another computer or LAN segment. I have a hub plugged into this port and the hub distributes traffic to the upstairs computers. Lastly, this device also has a telephone jack, so you can also plug a phone into this unit.

These devices work very well. They are available at CompUSA and elsewhere. The setup was trivial and the whole system was up and running in a matter of minutes. There is no interference on the phones. I have analog phones, electronic phones, and cordless phones. I also have phones connected with splitters to the same wall outlet as the network connections.

The instructions that come with the router very clearly instruct the user on how to configure the network settings for Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows ME computers. The user simply sets the computers to accept an IP address from a DHCP server (which is the router— the router assigns itself the address 192.168.1.1.) and, of course, configures the computers to use TCP/IP.

Configuration
Configuration of the router is also simple. It is accomplished by addressing the router from your favorite Web browser. The router has a built-in "Web server" to be used for only this configuration process. The instructions are very clear and easy to follow. The user "names" the router with the "name" assigned to your computer by the broadband service. The user also provides the router with the domain name server information also provided by the broadband service.

There are no settings for the HPNA-to-Ethernet bridge. The only caution here is to use a crossover or uplink cable, not a normal patch cable, between the bridge and the hub. Also note that when you use a crossover cable, the Ethernet port adjacent to the uplink connection on the hub is no longer available for use. You will find a 5-port hub quickly becomes a 4-port hub for this reason. Your hub may have the ability to accept any cable and electronically switch to an uplink configuration when needed.

Both of these devices come with indicator lights to show what is going on with the network. I found that my Windows 95 machine did not seek out and accept a DHCP address from the router. My Linux, Windows 98, and Windows ME machines work better with the DHCP than Windows 95 does. I was able to get around this by simply assigning a fixed, private address to the Win 95 machine. I picked an address within the range supported by the router but out of the range of the number of computers I am likely to have on the network. I also found that I needed to provide the Windows 95 machine with the DNS addresses supplied by the broadband service.

Each of my computers uses Ethernet network cards as their interface to the network. If you don't already have Ethernet cards to network the computers, you may wish to consider HPNA cards. I recommend using Ethernet because the cards are as low as $9.99, hubs are also quite reasonable, and the Ethernet capability is much more flexible should your network grow over time.

Joe Betts is a member of the PC Users’ Group of Colorado. This article is reprinted with permission from their magazine, The PCoCk.