Computer Networking at Home or Office
The reasons for Small Office, or Home Office networking are many and varied, Take your average farming family, The farm has a computer (in most cases) to keep track of numerous aspects of day to day farming, not the least of which is internet access, for various reports and the exchange of information with suppliers/buyers etc, this same family may have one or two students still living at home who also need internet access, not only for their studies, but also social contact with peers (email, chat rooms, Facebook and Twitter etc) Imagine the chaos, not to mention the anguish, if through some accident the main computer crashed, whilst the student was using it, "Oh dear" one might say!
Generally the Farm computer would be kept just for the farm, and the student would have a computer set up in their room or study area, linked to the outside world on your existing internet connection, simply by networking the two (or more) computers and sharing the same connection to the WWW
The basic network can be a cable system whereby the computers are connected via cable with a network hub or switch, an alternate type will be wireless, whereby all computers have a wireless connection via an appropriate router, or you can have a combination of both types.
Basic networking is relatively cheap to set up and can virtually eliminate the likelihood of "accidents" that could potentially be disastrous.