When I decided to build a new home, I had a lot of ideas that made my friends grin and give each other knowing looks. First there was the idea to plumb my shop and garage with air-pressure hoses. While my friends snickered, I soldered all the connections, dreaming of the day when I could turn my shop into something the most persnickety handyman would be proud of, and my garage into a high-pressure car wash.

Some of these same friends smiled when I told them I wanted to run Category 5 (CAT5) cabling throughout my new home as well. When they saw the thousand-foot spool of twisted-pair CAT5 sitting in the shell of my new garage, a few of them burst out laughing. "What are you going to do with that?" one of them asked.

"Build a home network before the drywall goes in," I replied confidently. A few close friends understood the potential, but most of them thought I had warped my brain while soldering all of the joints for the compressed air.

Now that I've actually been through that experience and have Ethernet jacks in almost every room of my house, I'm so glad I had the foresight to do it. And my friends are no longer laughing. It has not only enabled me to have a home network for file and print sharing, but also allowed my family to connect to the Internet from just about every room, via my always-on cable Internet connection. For those who think a home network is a marginal need, consider that my wife shares my profession--software engineering and documentation support---and that my son helps me review games for my moonlighting gig as ComputerUser's Games columnist. In short, the home network allows us to collaborate in ways that would not be possible with sneakernet.

The job of wiring a home for Ethernet is not without its difficulties, however. Therefore I thought it would be a good idea to walk you through the process so that if you are considering doing the same thing yourself, you can avoid any major problems and enjoy the full potential of home networking as I have.

Home Ethernet

I was lucky enough to be able to integrate this home network while my house was being built. In my opinion, it is much easier this way, but for those living in a finished home, the same principles and steps apply. On new construction, the best time to start your home network is before the house is drywalled but after it has been roughed for electricity. Buy some sturdy electrical outlet boxes and pound them into the studs where you think you want a network connection. Then drill holes and pull the CAT5 cable to a central point where you will have a power supply and some room.

In my case, I pulled all of my CAT5 cables to my shop. There are some codes for pulling CAT5, but since the cable is considered low-voltage (like a regular cable TV coaxial cable), there is little safety risk. You should try to keep your CAT5 away from the electric cables because noise from the latter can decrease or destroy performance in network cables.

As a rule of thumb, allow at least 12 inches of distance from electric wires. You also need to be fairly gentle when working with the cabling. Inside a CAT5 twisted-pair cable, there are typically four pairs of wires. Each of the pairs is twisted together. If you are too rough with the cable and it loses its integrity of twisted pairs, unpleasant results are likely. Make sure to leave plenty of cable inside the outlet box to make the final connections. This will allow you to more easily connect the outlets to the cables. After pulling the cables into my shop, I tucked the CAT5 out of the way of the construction workers.

Connecting network receptacles to the CAT5 cable is relatively easy. To make the job easier, though, I recommend buying some specialty hardware. At each spot where I had installed the outlet box and CAT5, I then installed RJ45 receptacles. (RJ45-your typical Ethernet connector-refers to the type of tip on the cabling.) The receptacle looks just like a regular single-gang outlet, but where your power plugs normally go, there is a spot to plug in an RJ45 cable.

Allen Tel Products Inc. supplies the receptacles that I used. But you can get them at most local computer hardware stores. The beauty of these receptacles is that you only need to fan out your twisted-pair cables into the backside of the unit, and the unit self-crimps each wire into place. The whole process is made even easier by the fact that the backside of the unit is color-coded, so you know where to put each of the eight wires. Although these units are a little more expensive than some similar products, your savings will be recognized in effortless hookups and a sharp, professional-looking presentation.

Once you have all the cable and outlets installed, your house is now network-ready. The rest of the work is at the other end of the CAT5 cables. On this end, you need to crimp on RJ45 tips. You will need both RJ45 tips and a crimping tool. You can buy both from any electrical supplier or at most online computer equipment retailers. Each of these tips will plug into a hub, a device that allows you to connect several Ethernet connections together (much like a splitter). Hubs require power, which is why I mentioned that you want to draw all of your connections to be somewhere near a power supply.

In my opinion, the best household hubs on the market are the Asante FriendlyNet Ethernet hubs. They are a little more expensive than others, but their quality and technical support are unparalleled. Furthermore, the FriendlyNet series is equipped with an uplink port. Uplink ports allow you to chain together devices like hubs. If your hub does not have uplink technology, you may need to construct a crossover cable. This is a minor hassle, and the directions to create these cables are available on the Internet. Either way, understanding your hub is critical; you will see why later in this article. After you connect each line to the hub and test its connectivity, the cabling part of your home network will be ready for use.

Home-Wide Internet

When I started wiring my home in 1997, I was merely planning for the future. I knew my family would have many computers, and I already had a network-ready printer. I wanted us to be able to share files and use the same printer without hassles. I was also envisioning a custom-built home network that I could eventually hook directly to a high-speed Internet connection. At that time in my neck of the woods, high-speed Internet access meant anything over 28.8 Kbps, which was slower than the free access provided by the university I had attended. To make matters worse, the maximum connection I was able to get through my ISP was only 21.6 Kbps. That basically limited me to sending and receiving e-mail. Surfing Web pages was a painfully protracted process.

But my local cable provider recently rolled out its cable modem service. The service boasted lightning-fast download speeds for about $39.99 per month for its cable subscribers, including me. Normally, there would also be a small installation fee. My brain fizzed as I began to imagine the possibilities. I already had the home network up and running. What would it take to plug my existing network into a cable modem and provide Internet access to multiple computers? No more dialing. No more waiting. No additional phone lines.

Naturally, I had more questions than answers at that point, so I did a lot of research before jumping at my cable provider's offer. Because each provider offers slightly different plans, you too should carefully research your options before acting. When you begin researching, you will want to educate yourself on a few of the finer points of networking.

Since you may want more than one computer hooked into the Internet at the same time, you should talk with your provider's technical-support people to determine how it distributes its IP addresses. Most ISPs use some form of Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to distribute IP addresses to its dependents. What this does is assign an IP address to a specific Net-enabled device based on certain criteria.

Some cable providers assign IP addresses based on cable customers' Network Interface Card's (NIC) MAC address, a 12-digit hexadecimal number that acts like a serial number for your NIC. Their DHCP servers authenticate MAC addresses against their records to ensure that you are a paying customer when your PC requests an IP address.

A method for authentication that's becoming more popular is one in which the cable modem itself decides how many devices it will authenticate. This method still uses DHCP. For example, at my house, the cable provider sets the modem to permit two MAC addresses to authenticate. This is important if you have more than two devices on your network with MAC addresses because the first two to fill the modem's quota will be authenticated and the rest will not. At my house, I have two PCs and a network printer. When I had a power failure, the printer was the first machine to turn back on, so it took the first MAC address when the modem rebooted. The first PC to power on took the second. The second PC to power on wasn't authenticated and therefore was unable to use the cable modem to gain Internet access. In the future, I will simply turn off my printer until my primary PCs are rebooted and authenticated with the modem.

Because cable modems provide direct access to the Internet, the Internet has direct access to your PC. I have heard a lot of myths about cable modem security, but the fact is that without taking certain measures, you are at risk to hackers. Even casual users can stumble their way into your PC through Windows File Sharing.

Because cable access provides bandwidth to whole communities as though they were on the same Ethernet network, if your neighbors click on their Network Neighborhood icons, they will see the files you share. A simple precaution here is to password-protect File Sharing or turn it off completely. Of course, this prevents you from using home networking while on the Internet, which defeats the purpose of the whole process.

The basic problem of cable Internet security is its always-on nature. In this respect, it has a lot in common with DSL and other high-speed access methods. Because always-on connections have a semipermanent status on the Internet, it is much easier for hackers to find your IP address and invade your systems than through dial-up. But just because your modem is always connected to the Internet doesn't mean your computer should be. The easiest way to protect yourself is by shutting down your computer when it's not in use.

Peter Schuh, the network system administrator for my cable provider, believes that PCs are at a greater risk to hackers than many believe. Since the typical purchase of cable modem service only includes the bandwidth for the Internet access and not the security of your PC, Schuh highly recommends that people purchase some sort of PC firewall product. You should be able to find such software for around $50. Norton Internet Security is probably tops on my list now, because of Norton's simple GUI and configuration.

My opinion on PC security is that you should protect your PC without going overboard. Remember that malicious hackers usually target places that have something to offer, so your PC probably does not rank high on their list. But if talented hackers really want to break into your computer, they will find a way. Therefore, it's a good idea to keep valuable documents within your house tucked away in a lock box. Sensitive financial information should be kept out of your hard drive, or at least on a removable drive.

Contributing Editor Brent Baude is an IBM software engineer based in Rochester, Minn.

Sidebar: What it Will Cost

1,000 feet of CAT5 networking cable: $60 (1) eight-port hub (10 Mbs): $50 (25-40) RJ45 tips: $25 Wall receptacles for voice and data: each @ $5 10 Mbs Ethernet card: each @ $19 (1) RJ11 and RJ45 crimping tool: $35