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Basic home networking with RISC OS computers.

Last updated: 28th November 1999

I've been asked about this topic a large number of times, and it occurred to me that most of the questions are similar. Since I know of no good simple source of information on this subject, I thought I'd create this document.

This is not meant to be a thorough guide to networking -- I shall only cover the most general cases and setups that will provide a maintainable and flexible networking setup. This may change in future, but for now, I refer readers to the comp.sys.acorn.networking FAQ which I also maintain.

If anyone finds this document useful, I'd love to hear from you.

This document is divided in to smaller sections for, for speed of download. Newcomers should read through each section in order.
  1. Background -- physical cabling
  2. Background -- Acorn software
  3. Background -- TCP/IP and Acorn Access
  4. Setting up Acorn TCP/IP networking
  5. Sharing printers, and using more features of Access+
  6. Setting up a proxy server, and accessing the Internet from proxied machines
  7. Adding a Windows PC to your network
  8. Q and A
Note to network experts: Before emailing about this document, picking up on some point to say "that's not entirely true", stop. I know. I've deliberately glossed over many things, and made some sweeping statements that have caveats or aren't strictly true in every case. I've done this because it's the common case, and as far as the general reader of this guide needs to be concerned, is sufficient to know and be able to understand when coming to the subject of networking for the first time. Don't hit me about MAC addresses, DCI specifics, Ethernet card specifics, because you're wasting your time. If, however, there really is something I've made a real mistake about, I'd appreciate your feedback!
Credit is due to:
ian@eh.org

This page was written by Ian Jeffray and hosted on his website until 2002, it is now available here with permission
MJPye.org.uk site design and layout Copyright © 2003 Matthew Pye. All Rights Reserved.