Setting up a network in your home office is a great idea if you have two or more computers and find yourself having to switch back and forth between the two periodically throughout the day. Setting up a network will allow you computers to ‘talk’ to each other and relay information back and forth. This means that you can save a document on one computer and will be able to pull it up on another computer.

Setting up a home office network is entirely up to you and your needs, but it definitely makes sending information from one computer to the next much easier than using a disk or CD.

How do you go about setting up a home office network? It is really quite simple especially if you have windows XP because this program allows you to network to lesser programs without needing additional hardware. Windows XP has thought of everything when setting up a network and they even have a network setup wizard which will talk you through the steps of how to network two or more computers. If you don’t already have network hardware you can use a feature in Windows XP called Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) which will allow you to share the internet with 2 or more computers. Eventually you may want to buy router hardware to network multiple computers together, but ICS will at least get you started.

One of the easiest networks to install if you only have two computers is the Ethernet network. To do this you will need each computer to have a Ethernet network card and then run a crossover cable between them. Those are the only steps involved in setting up a network in your home office.