Labors of the weekend

I was a very busy bee this weekend around our house. A three-day weekend, of course, means a long list of tasks to complete. (Well, for certain type-A personalities, anyway.) And while I did not complete my list (I never do), I am rather proud of what I did manage to get done.

My primary accomplishment was the complete rewiring of my home network. It started with the death of my printer earlier in the week. Several months ago, I decided that I would replace my printer with one that was network capable. I have several computers on my desk, but I could only print from the primary. So, on Monday night we bought an HP C6280 All-in-One.

Knowing that the printer was network capable did give me pause. For you see, the three ports on my router, and the eight ports on my switch, were all taken. I could have ditched one or two things that I rarely use. But ... I decided it was time to make order out of chaos, so I purchased a Netgear ProSafe 24 Port 10/100 Switch on Saturday. On Sunday, I tore apart my entire network. I labeled all the cables. Then I reconnected everything in an orderly/logical fashion. I even showed my family where their machines were connected to the switch and how they could tell if they had good connectivity.

Voila!



I configured the printer for two of my four systems, and for my son's system (his printer has been whacked out for months). I still need to set up the new printer for my husband's systems, my work laptop, and (here's the real challenge) for my Fedora server. Maybe that will be next weekend's project.