How to Set Up a Home Network: A Step-by-Step Guide

what's up guys welcome back to the channel i'm mike thanks for joining us i really appreciate it so guys on today's video we're gonna show you how to set up a home network just the basics just the fundamentals and the reason i created this video is because i have a lot of viewers and subscribers asking a lot of questions about home networks so i hope this video answers all those questions so let's get started oh don't forget hit subscribe that's what the cool kids are doing alright guys part one we're going to talk about the modem and whether you have dsl fiber or coax is all the same you have a line that comes from the outside of the house inside the house for us it's a fiber line comes in right here and goes into our modem and from the modem coming out of the modem is a network cable that goes all the way to our lan port on our router now this line that comes into the lan port gives our router internet connectivity alright guys part two is the router now first thing you want to do with your router set it up going into the admin settings and to access those settings you need to go to your computer that's connected to the router type in 192.168 now this is the first time accessing your admin router settings the password should be admin now let's go and take a look at our admin settings type in 192.168.1.1 this is your router's home screen like i said before this computer must be plugged into the lan port on the router with an ethernet cable if you're a first time user type in admin for password this admin screen may look a little bit different than yours but it should have all these settings wi-fi settings guest network media prioritization parental controls network map and even external storage and to the left is router settings connectivity troubleshooting wi-fi settings and security so now i'm going to show you the settings that you need to implement to have a safe fast and reliable network two things you want to change right away turn off your guest network and if you have children or teenagers turn on your parental controls now go to the connectivity tab these are the basic settings and there's two important things you need to do go to edit router password this is your admin password and you want to change that next you want to make sure your router firmware updates update automatically so make sure that box is checked and one more thing make sure the time zone is correct as well and with my particular router i can turn on and off my activity lights so if those lights annoy you just turn them off okay next is internet settings and make sure connection type is dhcp i have my mtu set to manual in size at 1470 but i recommend setting yours to automatic and don't worry i'll make a video explaining how to set this mtu size to the correct value okay next is local network this is basic information about your host name ip address subnet mask the dhcp server and address ranges next is advanced routing make sure nat is enabled network area translation there's a vlan tab and that's more of an advanced setting i'll post a video about that later in the last tab administration just make sure your settings match my settings and make sure to hit apply at the bottom alright next tab is wi-fi settings make sure to change the ssid names do not use the default router ssids now change the passwords and change security mode to wpa3 personal and then follow the rest of my settings the next tab is mac filtering and that's an advanced setting we'll stay away from that one and the next tab is wi-fi protected setup and make sure this is disabled when this is turned on you put your router at risk so keep this off and the last tab is wireless scheduler and it does what it says it does you can schedule wi-fi to be on or off at certain times at this point hit apply to save all settings and the last tab is security this one's pretty easy just copy my settings to your router settings the most important setting here is the firewall settings make sure they're turned on once you're done hit apply and that's it for basic settings on the wi-fi router now let's go back to the network panel alright guys part three now we're still going to talk about the router but i want to talk about the router's lan ports now if you have a small home these four lan ports should be enough for you however if you have a large home with lots of devices well that's not gonna do so to solve this problem you're gonna need a switch and a five port or eight port switch will do we have one right here now to get internet connectivity to the switch simply run a network cable from one of the lan ports any port will do to any port on the switch so now you've expanded your router from four lan ports now to three lan ports plus seven more on the switch giving you a total of 11 lan ports and for most homes that's plenty of ports now that takes us to part four adding additional switches can you do this absolutely you see a lot of cast six lines leaving the switch where they're going to different rooms and in those rooms we have additional switches there as well to add more ports so in each room i could add a five port switch theoretically gave me four extra ports for that room pretty cool i could add an eight port switch giving us seven additional lan ports if i wanted to and there is a question about adding too many switches to your network and slowing down your speeds but that rarely happens trust me i have a lot of switches and our speed is just fine alright guys part five is the last thing i want to talk about and these are smart home hubs for all your smart devices in your house all your iot devices if you take a look at the top of my panel you can see i have three smart home hubs i have one for my lutron switches and a samsung smartthings home and a kivo plus all of our hubs here are connected via cat6 to our switches making one smooth network and guys one last thing i want to talk about is adding a poe switch power over ethernet this ruckus switch is poe now i'm not going to get deep into this i just want to let you know you can add this as well this is for a different video but guys today was all about the basics of setting up a home network i hope this video helps you understand all those basics it's not that difficult if you have any questions leave them in the comments below i'll answer them right away and guys if you like this video it was helpful to you please give it a thumbs up and share it if you love it hit subscribe that's what the cool kids are doing and i'll see you next video real soon peace