Home Networking for Dummies

Home Networking for Dummies

Actually I have no claim at veracity in my title in that any assumption that my missive will lead to home networking expertise would be very wrong. Because it’s been one year since my husband and I moved to Delaware and became the first people in the state to get a home network. At least that’s what the cable people told me and judging by the quality of their home network installers at the time I think it’s a truth.

Yes it’s been a year and I still don’t know anything except if strange things happen. I don’t know why but if nothing else, I’ve learned to accept those things I do not know how to change.

The oddest experience would have to be the wireless big Gigahertz telephone. I still have no idea the correct gigahertz of the guilty phone or what the heck a gigahertz is at any rate. Our home’s proximity to the great Delaware chicken factories also contributed to the problem.

Every Sunday night at exactly 7 pm I noted our home network always went down. Of course I did not know why as I still have no idea why anything happens. But I did note that on Sunday nights there would be a big flash, big-huge-flash, from somewhere in the distance. Which I concluded, for no reason whatsoever, that this must be how they kill the chickens in Delaware. The great big electric flash kill, as I figured it.

Well there was never any sort of smell in the air and as a child I lived by the Baltimore stockyards. How else could there be no smell but that electric flash thing? Probably more humane too.

In due course I became convinced that when the chicken factories did the big electric flash thing it was somehow shorting out my home network. And I was darn mad about it too. I decided to tell my husband my brilliant deduction re the chicken factories and the following day I would inform the cable people.

“Have you noticed that the home network goes down every Sunday night at 7 pm?” I asked the other computer geek of the household.

“Yes,” he said, “and I know why.”

He was fiddling with phone wires at the time, swearing that he is fixing the problem now.

For a few moments I sat silent and pondered how moving around the phone wires would stop the great chicken execution going on down the road.

“There’s something about this telephone,” husband said, holding out the big Gigahertz cordless phone that I thought was a wonderful Christmas present from somebody, “that short-circuits the home network. My mother calls me every Sunday at 7 pm.”

I didn’t hear that bit about his mother’s weekly phone calls that always occurred on Sunday at 7 pm. Besides I’d already figured it out. “It’s the chickens,” I shouted to husband at exactly 6:59 pm.

“What are you talking about, chickens?” husband said

There was no time to present my theory as the phone rang. It was his mother.

“See,” husband said after their conversation. “The network didn’t go down. That’s because I hooked up the old phone, the one that doesn’t have such a high Gigahertz.”
Indeed the home network didn’t go down but no way would I believe it was because of a telephone! And I didn’t know our old phone had less Gigahertz but I didn’t mention that.

“Billy, maybe it’s not the chickens causing the home network to go down every Sunday but how on earth could a telephone …?”

“Yes ma’am,” the polite cable told me the following day when I phoned him that he should laugh at my husband’s folly. “You’ll need to get a different Gigahertz phone because those big Gigahertz phones interfere with the network.”

There are no phone conversations going on when print jobs just, poof, suddenly disappear. There are no phone conversations occurring when the file is not saved, no reason why, just the message “file not saved”. Not a soul is speaking on the telephone when I try to power down the “server” and the computer informs me that there are (1,2,3,4,5,6,7 pick one) users still connected to my computer. One time I was informed there were over 3,000 users still connected to my computer. Since the cable man told me that the range of the wireless network’s signal thing was no more than 75 feet, I imagine my house surrounded by over 3,000 people, all sitting in lawn chairs, all surfing the net happily on their portable computers via my home network. I always tell the server I don’t care, shut them all off. Then it goes on to tell me how many files are opened but let’s not go there.

Frankly I’m not sure I like all these signal things criss-crossing my environment so constantly. I figure between the home network, the microwave, the big Gigahertz phone …well it’s a good thing I don’t plan on having any more children.

Sometimes the remote computer requires a re-boot, sometimes the server, sometimes both. There’s no rhyme or reason why or if there is I gave up looking for rhyme or reason after the great chicken theory.

I can sit on my porch and write a Blog entry. I can answer my email on the back deck. I can access my recipe database right in my kitchen where I need it most. That’s the upside and so far I accept the open files and only get vaguely insulted when a remote computer won’t let me have access to my very own files.


Lately I have been getting messages while online that concern me. “Your computer has been re-set by the host computer”. Boom, everything goes down all because the host computer chooses to re-set.

I don’t know why. But it seems to happen whenever they do those big chicken flashes down the road.