I had originally intended to make this an addition to the Modem guide, however given the size of it I decided otherwise. As a result some of the information may be repeated in the Modem guide.

Setting it up

Go to Thresh’s Firingsquad, it has 2 guides up, How to setup a LAN, & A guide to Windows Networking. I suggest you read them both for information on how to setup a LAN & get it running. I will cover how to get them running better.

Network cards

Begin by downloading & installing the latest driver/update for your card from the manufacturer. This may fix any problem/compatibility issues with the card & generally give better performance.

Open up Network properties in the Control panel, selecting the appropriate adapter. Then go into the adapters Properties.

Select the Driver type tab, selecting Enhanced mode (32bit and 16bit) NDIS driver.

Under the Bindings tab, select only TCP/IP. Select others only if required to do so, this will give you the optimal speed.

Under the Advanced tab select the best choice that the LAN is capable of, e.g. if you (& the LAN) can support Full-duplex operation, then choose so accordingly.

Protocols

Start by removing any unnecessary Protocols, Adapters, Clients & Services from the Network control panel.

Now, select TCP/IP & hit Properties. For the sake of these guide the LAN will be a static one, i.e. static IP addresses & such rather than dynamically assigned. I’ll go into details for a dynamic one at a later date.

• Under the NetBIOS tab, untick the box there unless you have chosen to enable File & Printer sharing, then you must put a tick in the, I want to enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP option.

Under the DNS Configuration tab select Enable DNS. Once more, fill in the required host addresses as applicable.

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