ISP - aka your Internet Service Provider, this is Charter, Spectrum, Comcast, etc. They have a "node" most likely in your town that everything connects to and can access the internet from. To allow you to do this, the ISP usually provides you a "secure gateway" otherwise referred to usually as a "Modem" (a total misnomer TBH) that you'll most likely pay a monthly fee for. You pay them the agreed costs per month, they don't shut off your Gateway's access to the internet. That's how it works. Sometimes they have extra perks like web-hosting, e-mail addresses, domains, and whatnot, but overall, the ISP's only role is to enable their network to allow your Gateway to get on it and access the internet through it.

Typically this signal chain is ISP - Gateway/Modem - then maybe the computer itself, or a router and wireless acces point. Sometimes the functionality of these three core elements are combined.

Now that we have established what these devices are, let's talk about your "signal chain" if you will, for lack of a more layman set of terms.

The most typical setup you will encounter using discreet components is Gateway->Router->Switch->and then that fans off into the wireless access point the wireless clients connect to, and then all your ethernet "clients" on the network.

The Gateway would be your access point to the internet your ISP fees you every month for, usually made by Cisco, or Arris, or some other brand you've never heard of before. This should be of little to no concern to you. Often these come with a switch and Wireless Access point built into it these days.

The router often has a switch and Wireless AP built into it these days. But let's assume you're using old networking equipment, then your router would be placed just before the Gateway. What the router does, is what it says - routes traffic to and from the internet, and to and from other parts of the network.

The Wireless Access Point is often integrated into the Router unless you're using enterprise class equipment. This usually broadcasts an SSID - or Service-Set-IDentifier, IE, all the funny little names you see for your neighbor's wireless networks surrounding your house/apartment unit like "IRS Surveillance Van 110" or "Mormons in Space" or "Put Ur SSN Here". Connecting a vintage computer, especially of the 486 or older pursuasion, to one of these types of networks requires some special hardware to do it with proper security. Old networks were unsecured in the days before everyone knew how to basically "use" a computer, then came "WEP" encryption, or Wired Equivalent Privacy, which did almost f***-all to protect your wireless network. Last is WPA2-PSK or WPA-PSK, which are the modern versions of such that most people use. These stand for Wireless Protected Access - and the "PSK" at the end stands for "Pre-Shared Key" - ie a PASSWORD you create to protect it from unauthorized access, by not providing it to people you don't want to give access to your network to. But more on that later. There IS a way to connect a vintage client to these networks, and it's really not that hard either.

Lastly are your "Ethernet Clients" which most of us will be using for these types of devices. These are "Wired network" or "ethernet" connected clients that connect to the switch. Originally, I used "Hubs" to do this. The difference between a Hub and a Switch is a Switch has actual "logic" in it to allow it some routing capabilities. There are two types of switch, the regular, unmanaged type most of us will have at home, and then the "managed Switch" type we'll find in a corporate office. Managed Switches give us more abilities to manage traffic, such as splitting ports off into VLANs or "Virtual LANs" for further protection and to allow for better allocation of IP Addresses within a certain range to certain equipment for both management and security reasons. You also can use ACL's on a manged switch - Access Control Lists - to control access to certain things as well. But that's out of the scope for this document. I highly doubt most of us reading this would be messing with some kind of Cisco Catalyst enterprise-level switch, LOL.

The computers themselves will need either one of the following to be network capable - either a NIC or "Network Interface Card" which is an ISA or PCI (or even EISA) card with an ethernet port on it that allows for connectivity to a network. There are other connection types but I suggest against using them because it's going to make your life using a vintage computer a huge pain in the ass. You will need a Cat5e cable for it, but Cat6 or higher should also work if that's all you have.

But what if you want to connect these machines in a room on their own, or even in a garage, and don't want to drape 9-miles of ethernet across your house? Well, then there's the possibility of usinga Wireless Bridge. While the afore-linked page mentions my experiments with this, I'm also listing it here for a "one page suits all" sorta' deal.

Basically, instead, you plug the Wireless bridge into the ethernet port on a laptop computer, put in a default IP Address provided by the manufacturer, and default login credentials, and then usually run a wizard or manually configure it to connect to your WPA/WPA-2 wireless network. Then that device will act as a liason between the vintage PC and the modern Wireless Network. It also SEEMS to add some security by obscurification of the computer's identity to the network and/or the internet without directly addressing it.

And with all that squared away, you now have your computer connected to the network physically. I will be adding more guides to different bits in detail on connecting specific operating systems in their related sections on the site. I also am going to provide a VINTAGE NETWORK page here for general vintage network stuff outside of the O/S - basic stuff you need to know to properly configure a TCP/IP network, and do so SAFELY with these machines.