Introduction

Installing a network is easier than most people think, but maintaining a network is almost as much work as raising children. It seems to go on forever.

Like all computer professionals, I'm constantly asked for help, advice, and opinions. Every event and occasion in my life seems to produce questions about computers, and for the past few years, the vast majority of questions were about home networks. Everybody's installing one; this is a hot topic!

These freebie consulting sessions have occurred at dinner parties, while standing in line at the bank, and even in an operating room where the anesthesiologist, poising the IV above my arm, asked me to solve her wireless network problem. After a satisfactory response, I was permitted to drift off.

Tons of requests for help arrive in my Inbox every day, and for some reason I saved the questions, along with my responses. When O'Reilly contacted me about doing this book, I knew the reason. Because my Inbox could be accurately described as a source of information for every annoyance a home network owner could encounter, it was fate that I should turn those messages into a book.