Chapter 14: Disaster and Recovery Essentials for Your Small Network

Overview

Ten years ago, we talked about how wonderful it would be when most homes had a personal computer. Today, many homes and small offices now have two, or three, or even more computers.

Because of this, home and small networking has grown tremendously because users need a way for multiple computers talk to one another and to exchange files easily. This is important because many files today are larger than the capacity of a floppy disk. Who wants to burn a CD every time you want to move a file to a different computer? Networking also allows all the PCs to work with a single device such as a printer and to share a single Internet connection.

In fact, the ability to share a single Internet connection is one of the leading reasons home and small business users have networks. Otherwise, you’d need to have a separate Internet account and connection for each PC, and that’s not just expensive, it’s usually unnecessary. If broadband Internet access in the form of high-speed cable, DSL, or satellite service is not available, each PC needs its own phone line to dial out. Two or more computers can share a dial-up phone line Internet connection, but the maximum 56K speed divided among them may make that an unsatisfactory solution.

An estimated 7+ million U.S. households are now networked, along with millions of small offices. The number of home-based networks is expected to triple in the next few years. Networks aren’t just for geeks with too much hardware anymore.

This chapter assumes you’re one of those millions who has a network in place. I’m just slightly ahead of you, with three local networks serving my home and office complex. I’ll tell you what you need to know but can’t find in your networking manual and online support about protecting your network in the event of a disaster. I’ll also explain how to troubleshoot problems if you do experience a disaster. This chapter includes the most common types of disasters—the ones users sometimes cause themselves.

Note 

For complete details on setting up your home network, check out Mastering Home Networking by Mark Henricks (Sybex, 2000) and Home Networking Visual JumpStart by Erik B. Sherman (Sybex, 2000).