Home Networking, Intel-Style

By Jim Bray

With more and more homes having multiple PC's, it's no wonder that one of the hot areas of consumer electronics is home networking.

It makes sense to tie your computers together so you can share files, and an Internet connection - as well as enjoying the aimless thrills of head to head game playing. The problem is that conventional networks require you to string wires through your house, which can be an eyesore or an ordeal.

Several companies have come up with solutions to this conundrum. There are home network kits that use your phone lines or electrical wires to transmit the data, while others snip the wires altogether.

Intel's AnyPoint Home Network connects your computers wirelessly using radio technology quite similar to that in your cordless telephones. It's a terrific idea but, unfortunately, in my limited time with the system it never lived up to its marvelous promise.

This could be because the units we received for test purposes were labeled "Refurbished," but we'll never know for sure.

The AnyPoint Network is available in USB, Parallel port and PC card versions. Most home PC's will undoubtedly use the USB or parallel port manifestations; we used the USB version on our home network.

We normally have two PC's linked into our server, using the old fashioned "string the wire" method. Our youngest son's computer is upstairs, however, far away from the wires, which makes it a perfect place to test the AnyPoint.

The actual hookup is easy. Each unit (you need at least two of the $119 beasties, and can add more individually as required) hooks easily into a USB port, and when you activate them the software installs the necessary drivers for you. All the software you need is on the CD-ROM that comes in the box, and it doesn't require a lot of wherewithal to get it all up and running.

One thing that's nice about the configuration process is that you don't have to mess around with network addressing or protocols, and on the whole the AnyPoint Network makes sharing and mapping drives very easy. The AnyPoint Connectivity Software Suite includes a firewall and built in parental controls to help protect you and/or your family from the dark side of cyberspace. There's also Internet Sharing software that lets all PC's on the network surf simultaneously, with wild abandon, using a single connection. MusicMatch Jukebox lets you share and play MP3 music files across the network, and there's even a "Lite" version of a multiplayer game called "Re-Volt" that lets you race radio controlled cars head to head.

The actual set up and configuration went smoothly, and everything appeared to work fine - at first.

One thing that messed us up was AnyPoint's refusal to work with any operating system other than Windows 9x and Me. We generally run Windows 2000 and Linux, so this meant installing and, worse still, using the lower end Windows exclusively while running the network. This shouldn't be a problem in most homes, however, because most people run the Windows 9x/Me operating systems anyway.

Our biggest troubles came after we were up and running, during the actual use of the network. I don't know whether it was the 1.6 megabit speed of the network, or just a typical case of Murphy's Law, but we discovered to our chagrin that when my son was on the AnyPoint up in his room it wreaked havoc across the rest of the network. If he were surfing the Internet, for example, my other son's PC (where the other AnyPoint was installed) would slow down and become jerky even though he has a high end system.

Worse still, the AnyPoint network crashed so many times we started to think it must have been designed by the Windows operating system's development team.

Now, this may not cause a problem in households that aren't full of so-called "power users," but in our home it made us tire of the AnyPoint very quickly.

It's too bad. I really like the concept of a wireless network, but this particular example didn't work to our specifications or expectations. Not only that but, for the price ($238 to start), you can buy a couple of Ethernet cards and a whole mess of network cable.

Of course, that means going back to the messy task of stringing those darn wires…

Jim Bray's technology columns are distributed by the TechnoFILE and Mochila Syndicates. Copyright Jim Bray.

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