Commonly referred to as HPNA in the networking world-
This is a guide to setting up a network using the existing telephone wiring that is running through your home's walls.
You can connect your computers to a network using your phone jacks and wiring - basically saying that instead of running CAT-5 cable to ethernet cards on your computers you can use a special HPNA network card and regular telephone cabling into the phone jack. Not all your PC's need to be connected using this technology, in fact, this is usually reserved for "remote" computers that are in a room that is too far or too inconvenient to run an ethernet cable or reach with a wireless signal.
Similar to using an ethernet network each computer that connects to the network using a telephone cable and phone jack and will need its own Network card installed - this will be a PCI card most likely and must be HPNA capable.
If you have purchased an HPNA network card ( can also be a USB device ) and need help with how to install it you can use the instructions for installing an ethernet NIC (it's basically the same technique
Click here for instructions
It's very rare for a computer to already have an HPNA network card in it, so if you see a place where you can plug in a telephone size cable it is most likely a dial-up modem and will not be capable of connecting your computer to the network.
Also keep in mind that simply installing an HPNA card and plugging a telephone cable into the phone jack and possibly doing the same with another computer in another room is not necessarily going to create a computer network.
You are still going to need some kind of "central" device like a router that "talks" to each computer and decides which traffic goes to which pc.
The benefits to doing a network using HPNA are going to be the convenience of being able to plug your computer into the telephone jack in the wall and having it connect to your network and to able to SHARE THE SAME INTERNET CONNECTION as your other pcs and SHARE FILES between the computers. All this without running your own CAT-5 cabling or purchasing wireless equipment.
DO keep in mind though there are some drawbacks to using this type of networking technology.
First off you must understand that the quality of the communication between your computers using HPNA will be entirely dependant on the quality of the phone wiring of your home. Also, remember telephone wiring was not originally intended for this type of data transfer. So if your house is old or you have doubts about the quality of either the wiring or the phone jacks themselves, then you must keep that in mind if and when you are troubleshooting any issues that may arise during and after the install.
And as a side note
* Sometimes the phone company doesn't have your house wired correctly in order to allow this type of communication* - you may want to contact them or your ISP for more information.
What You'll need -
Telephone cabling- the minimal amount necessary to reach from your computer to the phone jack- you want this cable as short as possible
HPNA enabled Network Interface Card/Adapter- One for each computer that connects through the phone wiring
Router/Switch- one to be the central connector of all the computers
* It's best to have at least Windows 98 or newer version of windows on your computer * Like XP, ME, Windows2000
No need to worry about requirements for CPU speed or RAM or Harddrive space
The easiest way to create a computer network is to connect all your PC's to a central switch or router, which they will all use to communicate with one another. Look at the diagram below to see an example of what the finished network will look like.
So let us get started-
First thing is to decide if you are going to use a router or a switch You could use a Hub in this same type of set up, but with today's prices you're much better sticking with either a switch or a Router. But which one, both a router and switch are going to be the "decision maker" on the network, which means it will decide what data goes to what pc. Having said that a router is much smarter and does a much better job of this and make the number of decisions you have to make much simpler. And a switch will not be able to send out a HPNA signal for the pc's to detect. If you use a switch there will be some additional settings you will have to configure on your computers so they all have addresses on the network.
Also if you are planning on sharing single internet connection then you need to use a router so that it can dish out IP Addresses to each of the computers. SO it is probably best to just go with the router right off the bat, because it will be more useful down the road as your network expands and becomes more complex.
Not all routers do Home Phoneline Networking: FOR HPNA YOUR ROUTER MUST BE CAPABLE OF TRANSMITTING A HPNA signal down your telephone wiring
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