When we discussed routers, we mentioned how more and more items are connecting to the Internet via Ethernet cables. Well, now comes the question of what do you do when you run out of Ethernet ports on your router.

There is a secondary item you can buy known as a “switch”. Again, like routers, this is a marketing term, but it is how the items will be labeled when you go to buy one. What you will do with one of these is you will run an Ethernet cable from one the ports on your router to the “uplink” port on the switch. Yes, you will lose one port there, but you will considering switches have anywhere from 4 to dozens of of ports, you are gaining. For home use, you will typically buy a switch with either 4 or 8 ports.

This gives you a lot of options as you can either increase the number of ports near your router, or you can run one long cable to another part of your house, attach it to a switch, and then you Ethernet ports in that room. In my house, my router is on the main floor of my house, but I have run cable to the upstairs and the basement, added switches there, and I now have Ethernet ports on every floor of the house in the rooms where I use computers the most.

They aren’t the fanciest pieces of hardware in the world, but they serve a distinct purpose in this exceedingly connected world.

Technically, you can use a cable modem to a switch, and the switch to your computers, eliminating the router, but I don’t recommend this. While switches are cheaper ($19.99 for a four port), they do not have the built-in security software of a router.  I always recommend placing a router between your cable modem and any other hardware in your house; it may not be perfect security, but at least it is another layer.

NAS stands for “Networked Attached Storage”, meaning a hard drive of some type that can be accessed by the computers on your network.

The main idea is to give you space for storage without bogging down your actual computer. While this may sound like something that should stay in the realm of corporate computing, there are numerous uses for it inside of the home also.

NAS drives come in all sorts of configurations, but normally for home use you’re going to want to do something that uses an Ethernet cable to plug into your router so that all the computers in your home can easily access it at any time. If you choose to go with a NAS that connects to a computer via USB 2.0, it is only going to be accessible when the computer it is attached to is up and running, which makes it highly inconvenient for most setups.

The main point to having one is it gives you a centralized point in the home for every one to store files and then everyone else can easily get to them, say like your family photos. Continuing the thought of sharing those files is to put your MP3 music collection on to the NAS drive, and then setting up your iTunes, or other comparable player, to pull the music from there and stream it to your computer. This way everyone in the house can share the exact same music collection without having to have multiple copies everywhere. You can also use this to stream videos to devices such as the Apple TV.

Some of the other interesting uses though can be as a centralized back-up system; prices for extremely large drives is getting cheaper by the day, if the NAS is large enough, every computer in your home can back up their files to just one drive. That is something that is priceless to be honest, until you have a computer crash and lose everything, you’ll never quite grasp how good having a back-up system feels.

In short, a NAS in the home makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons, and it’s something I recommend for everyone with a home network.

Placeshifting is a term you don’t hear all that often as it is a technology that still hasn’t hit mass-market penetration.  With a recent announcement that Dish Network will be integrating it into their new HD DVRs, it should be something you hear a lot more about in the months to come.

In short, placeshifting is the act of literally shifting the location of where you watch your media from one place to another.  This is most commonly used with television broadcasts, but you can do it with a number of different devices such as DVRs, VCRa, CDs and more.

The most common name in the placeshifting marketplace is Sling Media which makes a line of products called “Slingbox“.  By plugging your satellite or cable receiver into their piece of hardware, connecting your box via Ethernet cable to your router, and then finally a piece of software on your laptop or selected mobile devices, you are able to watch the TV in your home anywhere you have an Internet connection.  Whatever appears on your TV at home will appear on your mobile device/laptop, and will also have full control over the television to change channels, and even control the DVR if that is connected.

While there has been some question as to if this is legal, thus far it has been found to be okay so long as you only use it for your personal use, and it is your own TV programming you’re watching.

The device really couldn’t be simpler to set up, and if you are someone who travels extensively for business, you couldn’t find an easier way to keep up with your favorite shows while away from home.

Though we have discussed what social networking is, what exactly is the networking portion, and what purpose does it serve?

The picture to the right is an image I took using a Facebook application called Nexus.  Each dot in the picture represents one of my “friends” on the popular social networking site, and each line represents one person being friended to another besides myself.  As you can see, some people are connected to many others, while some have no other connections.  This doesn’t necessarily mean they have no other friends, we just don’t have any others in common with one another.

While all of this is great, the question becomes what you do with your “network”?  While some social sites such as LinkedIn promote the professional aspect of networking, most of them are merely about connecting with old friends, or people you currently work with.   It can be useful for self-promotion, such as with your own blog, or other personal type project, but for work advancement, it is not perfected yet.

How to expand this into something meaningful, or new leads for work or advancement… well, that’s still trying to be worked out.  Until then, enjoy catching up with your friends and family… and charts with dots and lines!

Mashup is one of those terms you hear and see around the web quite often, but again it is hardly ever explained.  Like so many other terms, people just assume you know what it means.  So, as always, StarterTech is here to help you learn what these things mean.

As the name would imply, a mashup involves taking a minimum of two web services and making them work together to create a third service.  The one we’ve pictured to the right is called Twittervision and combines Google Maps with Twitter to give you a graphic representation of where each twitter is coming from around the world.

All of this is accomplished via the use of application programming interfaces (API) which allow programmers to access the raw data of a service and manipulate it in different ways to create other tools.  While we have shown you a fairly frivolous example here, there are thousands upon thousands of such tools out there on the web now, with all sorts of varying degrees of usefulness.

So, next time you see the word, at least you’ll have some idea of what is being discussed.

We’ve discussed Wi-Fi before, and we’ve discussed routers, and though we told you to lock down your router so people couldn’t use your connection, there are times when sharing your connection can be a good thing.

A company named Fon has come up with a system where you purchase a router from them for $53, a reasonable price for a Wi-Fi router, the encourages you to let others share in your connection.  While this may seem like a scary concept security wise, the device is built to handle this by offering two channels of connectivity.

The private channel, the one you will use, is secured by you entering the router’s serial number as the password, so it is fairly unlikely that anyone will hack it.  The second channel is a public one that is unable to access any traffic on the private channel.

The public channel can be used in two different ways, either from people willing to pay to use your connection, if you so choose to do that, or by other people who own a Fon router.  That’s one of the side benefits of owning one of these is that it gives you the right to use other Fon routers anywhere in the world, which can be located by using this handy Google Maps mashup.  So if you’re traveling any where in the world, you can have free access to the Internet.

It is certainly not a perfect system, but if you are in the market to add Wi-Fi to your home or office, this is a handy way to do it with a lot of potential side benefits.

Wi-Fi is another one of those terms that people toss around without much thought to if people know what it is, or what it does.  Essentially it is just the common name for the way computers and other devices converse with one another in a wireless manner, or connect with the Internet.

While Wi-Fi is the common term, what you are actually using is variations of the modulation for wireless communications using the 802.11 standard.  This technology has now been included in items such as computers, handheld video games, game consoles, PDAs, phones, media players and more, all of them with the intention of letting you get on to the Internet from more convenient locations, and without the restriction of wires.

Thus far the technology has had three official iterations released to the public:

802.11a – Released in 1999, running in the 5 GHz range, this standard didn’t run long due to the lousy ranges the devices got.

802.11b – Also released in 1999, this version ran in the 2.4 GHz range, and traded speed for distance.  Due to the range, this was the first standard to catch on with the public.

802.11g – Still in the 2.4 GHz range, this version came out in 2003 and really helped the concept take off with the public.

802.11n – While 802.11n devices have been released, these are not yet a finalized standard.  Once done, this will be the fastest yet, with the same approximate range as b and g.

The problem with 2.4 GHz is that this is the same bandwidth that most cordless phones, microwaves and Bluetooth operate on, so you can see signal problems with conflicting signals.  This is why you have seen a lot of cordless phones advertising they now operate in the 5.8 GHz range as it reduces the interference with your wireless Internet connections.

Amongst the biggest benefits of the technology is the number of restaurants, coffee shops, hotels and more that are offering free Wi-Fi to their customers.  While cities have attempted to offer free Wi-Fi across their entire population, unfortunately most of these initiatives end in failure, so that is why it is always handy to look for businesses offering free Wi-Fi, or some other systems we will discuss in the future.

Quite often if you have to call in for tech support on your broadband Internet connection, they will ask you if you have a router connected to your modem, but what is a router?

Typically called “routers”, the actual name for the pieces of equipment you put in your home to assist in running multiple computers is “residential gateway”. While you certainly can run your computers without a gateway, this device will allow your computers to not only talk to each other and share files, it will also allow your system to share the same Internet connection. So instead of plugging your modem directly into your computer, you would instead plug it into the gateway, and then your computers into the gateway also. Most of these devices today are Wi-Fi, so quite often you won’t even need to plug in your computers directly, but I personally always find it more reliable.

Besides allowing all of your computers to talk to each other, they can be a useful device to have around just for the convenience they give people who may visit you, and also as an added layer of security for your computer. Most gateways today come with a built-in firewall, making it that much more difficult for hackers to get into your system, causing potential damage. As for being useful to anyone who may visit your home, Wi-Fi is appearing in more and more devices from the iPod Touch to cell phones, so allowing someone to hop on to your connection to check their email is always nice, just make sure to secure the gateway from random users as should be listed in your instruction book that came with your gateway.

The other issue that is coming up more and more in technology is not just computers needing to connect to the Internet, but also video game systems, DVD players, VoIP phones and more are all using ethernet cables now to hook up to the gateways, as well as Wi-Fi. The ability for devices to talk to the Internet and download new software updates is becoming essential to any gadget’s operation. Eventually you will need to be connecting multiple devices to the Internet, so you may as well get to work on it now.

I can not stress this enough, though, if you purchase a Wi-Fi enabled gateway (router), make sure to follow the manufacturers instructions on securing your wireless signal so that no neighbors, are curious wander-bys can get on your network, or use your Internet connection for nefarious doings.

It’s another one of those sites you see all over the web, and you hear about it constantly, but what exactly is Digg?

Launched in December 2004, Digg was one of the first social bookmarking sites that encouraged people to get involved with helping to let other people know when you thought a site or article is important. A user first submits a blog article to the site by providing a link to the story, followed by a picture to symbolize the story (usually an image from what you are submitting), a description and a category.

Once it has been submitted, other people who like the story can “Digg” the story by clicking on a simple button on the actual Digg site, or by clicking on a button the blog owner has embedded in their actual site. If a story gets “dugg” enough times, it can make it to the front page of the Digg site which can mean a tremendous amount of traffic for the site that published the story.

The site has gone through many trials and tribulations with their original core users getting upset by the fact that technology related stories aren’t featured as prominently as they used to be, but with the popularity of the site growing into the mainstream, its CEO was named 1 of the Time 100 of 2008, it has begin to reflect society as a whole, and not just the early adopters.

So, next time you see that little badge, and you like the story, why not give it a click and do the suthor a favor of helping them get more readers?

Computer cables can be highly confusing, but they don’t have to be.  If computer makers have done any thing correctly, they’ve made sure the different styles of cables have very different connectors so you can quickly identify them just by shape.

Take this cable to the right.  It does look a bit like a telephone line, but if you saw it in comparison, you would see it is quite obviously broader.  We’re starting a series about cables with this one because it is probably one of the most misunderstood cables.

This one goes by many names, but the three most common are “RJ45″, “Cat 5″ and the most popular, “Ethernet”.  If you aren’t connecting your computer via Wi-Fi network, than more than likely you are using one of these cables.

Ethernet cables are almost always “Category 5″ (hence the “Cat 5″ name), meaning they run at 100 MHz and are used for 100 Mbit networks.  In plain English, this means they are perfect for transmission of data over a home network, and most other networks to be quite honest.  You will usually find  the connection on the back of desktop computers, and on laptops they usually are on the sides, but sometimes can be found on the back.

As with most cabling, the price will vary depending on the length you purchase, but do keep in mind that it is not recommended to go past 100 feet; the longer the cable, the weaker the signal, and the more it degrades.  For people who travel extensively, I always recommend carrying a 25 foot cable in their computer bag as that should allow you to wander around a hotel room pretty well.  While you’re at home, or in your office, I always suggest 14 feet or shorter just for the strongest signal, though I do run some 50 foot ones so I can run cables through different floors of the house and have seen no discernible loss of quality.

A lot of people ask me why you should use a cable over Wi-Fi, and the thing is while it ties you down physically, it is a faster connection, and more reliable.  Wi-Fi can be affected by things such as weather, physical obstacles and any other number of circumstances, but the cable just chugs along.  Being connected by a cable may be “old school” but I see no reason to mess with success when you don’t have to.

What other cables do you wonder about?