Installing and Configuring an Ethernet Card in Your Computer

The Georgetown College Campus Network is an ethernet, or 10baseT, network. In order to connect a computer in your dorm room, you must first purchase and have installed an ethernet (or 10baseT) network card. You will also need an ethernet cable long enough to reach from where you set up your computer to one of the beige outlets in the technology box in your room.

The College does not provide ethernet cards or cables, though either can be purchased at The Store in the Student Center. Any brand ethernet card should work in your PC, although ITS recommends 3Com brand cards for reliability and ease of installation. Many ethernet cards come in two speeds, usually labelled as 10/100 cards. Our network currently runs at 10mps (megabits per second), so paying additional money for a card capable of tranmitting at 100mps has no advantage and is probably not worth the extra cost. You will also need to know what type of available expansion slot your computer has for accepting the network card. In non-Pentium computers, the available slot is almost always an ISA slot. In Pentium computers, it may be either ISA or PCI. Consult your owner's manual to determine the type slot your computer has, and buy either an ISA or PCI card according. Laptop, or notebook, computers take PCMCIA cards, sometimes referred to as credit card adapters. Also, if you receive your ethernet card second hand, be sure and get any installation or driver diskettes that originally came with the card. It may not be possible to correctly configure your card without these diskettes.

Installing network cards can be tricky, and it is usually worth the extra money to have the card installed and tested by the people who sold it to you. This unfortunately is not possible if you choose to buy your card from The Store.

If you are installing the card yourself, follow the manufacturer's instructions for inserting the card in your computer, configuring, and testing it. In most cases physically installing the card requires only a screwdriver. Because of liability concerns, ITS cannot install these cards in your computer, though we can help you troubleshoot the installation.

The two main considerations in configuring a network card are interrupt level (or IRQ) and memory address. Your card's setup or configuration program will present you with the available IRQs and addresses for that card. Once these have been set by the configuraton program, make a note of them as they may need to be used later when you install the network software. Often the IRQ chosen by the card setup program will no longer be available when Windows is running. In these cases Windows will assign the card an available IRQ and/or memory address. If this occurs the configuration program for your network card may need to be run again to change the settings.