IT journalists tend to be at the forefront of nerdism, and a few years ago it wasn't uncommon to find a squirm* of hacks standing around discussing who had the largest home network. Servers in the cellar, CAT 5 cabling up the walls and routers under the floorboards. Sad, really, since the only practical use for such a setup at the time was to play Duke Nukem 3D. Actually, that's not so sad...

But, to wander back to reality for a moment, a home network is now a more useful proposition. With the right software and some patience, it's possible to set up a peer-to-peer network (i.e. connecting machines together directly, rather than connecting them all to a server) so that you can play the vast array of multi-player games now available, or share printers, scanners and even Internet connections. There are several 'starter kits' on the market and this one from SMC contains all you need to connect two computers together.

Included in the box is a small Ethernet hub, a pair of very small PCI network cards and two network cables, plus the necessary software. The hub itself, capable of operating in either 10Mbps or 100Mbps mode with automatic switching, is about the size of a desktop modem and is constructed from purple and white translucent plastics, in an iMac stylee.

It's supplied with a stand, and has five network ports at the rear. Four of these are for connecting up to four PCs (although obviously you'd have to buy two more network cards and cables to use the full complement of ports), while the fifth is an uplink port that can be used to attach the hub to another hub, as part of a larger network.

Despite their dinky dimensions and apparent lack of silicon, the two network cards are 10/100Mbps devices and can be installed in any free PCI slot. Obviously this part of the installation process involves a screwdriver, which might be daunting to some users, but installation on our test systems was straightforward and the supplied CD includes drivers for Windows 95/98/2000, Linux and MacOS 8.6.

On our Windows 98 systems, in fact, installation was nearly painless, since Windows detected the new cards, asked for drivers and then installed the relevant networking protocols. Once that's done, sharing printers, disk drives and even modems is pretty easy, and obviously there's also scope for multi-player gaming when nobody's looking. Except the other player, obviously.

Verdict
Short of buying a USB-based kit, which could be set up without even using a screwdriver, this is about as simple as networking can get, and users should be able to connect two PCs together in a relatively short time. The advantages, in terms of sharing resources and reducing cable clutter, could be significant. Although you still run the risk of being called a nerd.

Company: SMC

Contact: 0800 581 689

Tags: conventional pci imac network interface controller personal computer operating system data communications network hardware