BUILDING A HOME NETWORK

 Hello and Welcome to Cyber Kommad, this an official kick start post were ill be discussing networking, security and ethical hacking plus other topics in the cybersecurity field with also hands on  projects i choose to embark on you can also share ideas and reach out to me on topics and projects. Enjoy this short project i put together on building a home lab cheers.

First am going to start with what actually a home network a home network is a group of devices like a computer, smartphones, tablet, smart TVs or gaming consoles connect together in your home to share resources and access the internet. Think of it as a small private communication system that lets your devices talk to each other and go online through a central device called a router.

Router; the main device that connects your home network to the internet provided by your internet service provider it also lets devices in your home communicate with each other.

Devices: Anything that connects to the network, like your phone, laptop, or smart speaker.

Wi-Fi or Ethernet: Devices connect to the router either wirelessly or with a physical cable

Purpose: A home network allows you to browse the internet, stream videos, share files between devices

If you’re thinking about setting up a home network I assume you already have a little knowledge on networking if you do not I advice you to take a free course with Cisco net-cad academy on networking basics this give you the basic knowledge of networking.

Device's used for my home network:

 

• PC

• Wireless router

• Cable modem

• Coaxial

• Switch

• Laptop

• Printer

• TV

STEPS 2:   Connecting the devices using the right Cable types.

If you’ve come this far you know using the right cables are important when connecting the devices for Ethernet connection or building your MDF,IDF in networking it remains very vital in building a network.

• Use the copper straight through cable to connect the router and the PC.

• Use the copper straight through cable to connect the wireless router to the switch

• Use the copper straight through cable to connect the switch and the printer

• Use the copper cross over cable to connect the router and the cable modem

• Use the coaxial cable to connect cable modem to the coaxial splitter

• Use the coaxial cable to connect the coaxial to the TV

• Don’t forget to use the WiFi to connect the laptop to the router

There you have it now all device have been connected to the router and can have internet access next step would be assigning IP addresses to the devices in the configuration settings of each device, lets dive in and do that together.

Were going to start with the PC by right clicking the pc all the configuration settings in pc would displayed there you navigate to the desktop and find the IP configuration settings and request for DHCP IP address as you can see in the image above.

The DHCP request was successful as the image above shows ,follow this steps and 9im sure you’ll be an expert in no time next we should check if the PC as internet connection now by pinging the IP address (192.168.0.106) that was assigned the PC you’ll find the command prompt in desktop menu options

Congratulations you just assigned an ip address to the PC and also pinged the IP address to confirm if the IP address is online and can communicate with the internet, from the image above in the command prompt the IP address 192.168.0.106 was pinged and there was no packet loss they were all received during the conversation between the router and the PC. You’ll have to configure the laptop and any other PC or device that can access the internet although in this home lab we are using a laptop and PC. Feel free to add more devices and play around that the best way to learn.

 

Step 3: Assigning IP address for the laptop.

 Navigate to desktop in the menu bar and click home this option is for connecting through WiFi settings click on your WiFi SSID or WiFi name and enter the password if you set on in this network lab the wireless routers SSID is myhome and that’s what I’ll be connecting to for internet on the laptop.

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In the images above we connected the laptop to wireless router using wifi, requested for an IP address which was successful and finally ping the IP address the IP address for the laptop is 192.168.0.104 as you can see in the command prompt above lets try and use the HTTP protocol service to see what happens when we use the web browser.

Okay a brief explanation of the image above just like we talked about previously I tried to browse the ip address 192.168.0.104 if look at image three you see that the packet from the laptop as now reached the router and how that stay communicating with each other over the network I'm not gong to be discussing about packet frames I expect you to have an idea of what packets are and how they travel through the OSI models if you got this far in the first image we look at the result of the browser which says “Server Reset Connection”, obviously we weren’t actually expecting to surf the web with Cisco packet tracer as it is just for practice. That’s all the devices that need configuration on my home network for now if I decide to add more ill put it up here also if you’re interested in learning networking ill leave the link to Cisco network free courses, until next time adios.

Cisco Network Academy Link :https://www.netacad.com/