Linking PCs seems a daunting task, especially if you have never tried this before. As in all things PC, it's easier when copying a mate/taking advice from someone who's done it/or following a guide. Having been through the first two stages and successfully run a NIC linked pair, and then moved onto a hub. I thought I could help others and provide myself a written record for when I forget!

At the basic level two PCs can be linked using a serial cable and Windows DCC settings. Having been there and done that I will skip on to more recent set-ups.

If you have attended a LAN party you will have a Network Interface Card (NIC). Older models have big round BNC connectors and you get involved in T-pieces and terminators blah drone etc. These days Ethernet connections are either RJ45 (which resemble large Western type phone jacks, the type that link your handset to the base) or fibre-optical. Fibre optics is a big business option, so forget them.

Ethernet has two standards; Ethernet at 10MBs and Fast Ethernet at 100MBs. A cheap 10/100 (i.e. supports both options) card can be purchased from www.simply.co.uk for example, at the princely sum of £15. Obviously you will need a second PC with a NIC card and appropriate cabling.

The simplest way of joining these two cards is to use a cross-over cable. These can be bought pre-made in lengths up to 30M, 5 to 10 allows you the most flexibility allowing friends machines to be placed in other rooms. Obviously there can only be two machines linked this way.

More machines require a Hub. A hub simply receives a signal from on of the PCs attached to it and sends it to ALL the machines connected. The machine that it is intended for RECEIVES it; the remainder ignore the signal. Obviously this is an inefficient method and this limits the number of machines to around a maximum of 40 or so. Your home LAN with 1 to 7 chums will work just fine across a 10MB hub.

Setting for two machine or ten machines are the same whether you use a cross over cable or a hub.
On to the screenshots & the meat of the article.

After installing the NICs and running their setup disks, a quick visit to Control Panel/Networks should look similar to this:

	As you can see both my modem & the NIC have their own Adaptor and TCP/IP settings. Additionally file & printer sharing are enabled. This makes some of the big downloads on my main PC available in seconds on the machine upstairs in the kids bedroom. You don't even need to copy them across, simply double clicking on the in Windows Explorer on the other machine installs them over the connection. Upstairs can print downstairs and so on… No adjustment to the default settings for the NIC adaptor protocols need be made.
You now have to add the TCP/IP setting for both machines.
	Some IP numbers are reserved and you should not use them. The lowest 'free' number as it were is 10.1.1.1 so lets make that the IP of the first machine. Yo have to use the default subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 with all Ips between 1 & 126 The second machine and subsequent machines (if you are using a hub) should be called 10.1.1.2, 10.1.1.3 and so on using the same subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. Leave remaining TCP/IP settings alone. The defaults are fine. This causes another reboot, make sure to have you Win95/98/ME disk to hand.
	The last thing you have to do is give your network and computer a name. Names have to be unique; here are my settings: As you can see I use my nickname as the computer name. You can use anything you like as long as it's different from the other machines in your network. The workgroup name has to be the same (or the PCs would not see each other) I have used the name from the LAN party I attended saving me the effort of changing it the next time! You can put whatever you like in the description box.

Changing the computers name causes yet another reboot and then you should be there.

The machine upstairs is an old K6 200 and it takes a minute or so after loading windows before detecting the network, so be patient on low-spec machines.

A simple test is known as a Loopback. Ping 127.0.0.1 (or anything with 127 at the start) tests that TCP/IP is installed correctly on that machine, pinging the machines own IP proves that the protocol is then "bound" to that NIC. Generally if you cant ping your own IP, but the loopback works, then a reboot will cure it as it reloads the protocol stack on a boot up.

If this is fine then on all the PCs open up a DOS box and type "Ping 10.1.1.x" where x is the last digit of the machines IP.

Ping 10.1.1.1 on my machine results in the following:

Pinging 10.1.1.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.1.1.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 10.1.1.1:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

This means you machine is talking to its own card. Repeat this on the same PC substituting the IP with 10.1.1.2 (and so on) and you should get similar results.

Opening the Network Icon on you desktop will give a visual representation of you network and you can 'explore' the other PCs from there as well as simply using Windows Explorer.

You can decide which bit of your Hard Drive to share, simply by selecting the drive or directory with the Right Mouse Button and selecting the 'Share…' option. This allows you to share your MP3s and hide you begging letters to the bank manager! Also a very easy way of copying the 130MB Counter Strike file from your machine to his in a few seconds. Saving one of you a 4-hour download.

That's it and it time for LAN game heaven.

A couple of trouble shooting tips; If you are using a hub and it lights up, everything checks out and you still can't connect, turn the hub on and off. It took me 2 days to figure that one out (aargh!). Make sure the lights on the rear of your NIC show up! The one upstairs 'popped' as the motherboard is slightly warped. Be methodical.