Streaming videos from your network storage device to devices in your home entertainment center can sometimes cause more rants than raves.

Try firing up a living room device like an Xbox 360, navigating to an .MKV video file on your D-Link ShareCenter network storage device, and selecting it for playback. Your gaming console might see the file, but there’s no way it’s going to stream.

One of the greatest joys of a living room networking setup is having everything within arm’s reach. I barely have to shift any weight on my couch to press my network storage device’s On button, and I can use a remote to fire up my TV or gaming console, which can receive streams of all the movies on my storage device.

But it hasn’t always been that easy. My first forays into movie streaming were a bit difficult due to one simple fact: There are a ton of different file formats that represent video files. And not all playback devices — HDTVs, consoles, or set-top boxes — can seamlessly go from selected file to streamed film.

Manipulating files on your ShareCenter network storage device is easy: Fire up your device in the network section of Windows Explorer to add, delete, move, and copy files to your heart’s content.

But what if you want to access these files from a computer that’s outside of your network? Lucky for you, I’ll cover that in this and the next few blog posts.

UltraVNC, one of my favorite applications to run on my network, has saved me more times than I can think to imagine.

It works like this: On one system, you run a “server” version of the application. And it just sits there, idling in the background until you make contact. On another system, you run a “viewer” version of the app. Forge a connection between your “viewer” system and your “server” system, and you can immediately see the screen of the server PC as if you were sitting right in front of it. Your mouse becomes its mouse; your keyboard, its keyboard.

The most important aspect of your router — except for the connection that supplies power to the device — is its Web configuration screen. This is the heart, brain, and soul of your router. It’s the place where you go to set up all sorts of important options, including your router’s wireless networking and security settings, port forwarding for your software apps that need special access to the Internet, and all the special control options that allow you to dictate who/what accesses your network and when.

There’s one main reason why you’d want to grant your desktop PC access to the wireless world, and it’s a biggie: You’re sick of stringing ugly Ethernet cables around your house. But you also might not have any Ethernet cable on-hand to make a wired connection — or worse, no room left on your router to plug in another cord.

I’ve previously covered a couple of fancier ways to bridge the gap between your wired desktop system and your wireless Internet signal. But these have all been hybrid methods that often still require a cord of some sort — as in the case when you connect your system to a wireless bridge. he D-Link® Xtreme N® Dual Band USB Adapter (DWA-160)

Ever hear of a Static IP address? You might not have, but it’s one of the more powerful techniques you can employ to take control of devices connected to your home network and, more importantly, use them to their maximum potential. If a connected device doesn’t have a static IP address, then your router is free to choose whatever IP address it wants (typically the lowest available at the time) during the normal IP release and renewal process that all routers perform on a regular basis. Depending on the amount of time your router “leases” a device an IP address, this could mean that your Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone might have a different IP address each and every time you come home from work and connect to your network.

These changes won’t make a lick of difference when you’re just surfing the Internet, but they could greatly impact your ability to use more advanced applications within your network — including apps that stream music or video to your phone, peer-to-peer file sharing, and apps like UltraVNC that remote-connect you to your desktop or laptop, or the process of backing up files to a network storage device.

If you’re like me, then you have a pretty sweet home networking setup — perhaps one that’s more powerful than what’s necessary for the size of your home. You’re blasting the airwaves with a Wireless-N signal from your primary router, and you might even be using an access point to stretch that signal as far as it can possibly go to ensure you’ve always got coverage.

Here’s the thing: If your signal is strong enough, there’s a good chance it’s going to pass right through the walls of your house…and keep on going. All your neighbors are going to see that your wireless network has the strongest signal they can connect their devices to. And if you’ve left your wireless network completely open — even though I’ve repeatedly advised against it — that’s the network that their devices will try to connect to by default.

You’ve got mail — and it could be from your router. And here you thought your router’s only purpose was to make sure that data travels seamlessly from point A to point B. Any router worth its salt can email you directly with daily status checks, access log files, and other useful information.

So what’s the point of giving your router the power to email you? First off, you gain a detailed look at all of your devices’ networking activities, as well as information on the kinds of devices connecting to your network that you may or may not know about. In some cases, you can also receive instant notifications when new firmware updates become available that can give your router additional features, improved security, and simplified configuration.

Here’s the good news: Because you’ve locked down your wireless network and router configuration settings, you’re one step ahead of anyone trying to access your network and its devices.

The bad news? Depending on which password you’ve forgotten – the Wi-Fi password that enables you to connect devices to your router, or the administrative password you use to log directly in to your router —you’re either in for a short visit to your router’s Web configuration screen or a total router reset.

Q: How can I tell if an unauthorized person is on my wireless network?

A: You find strange files on your desktop, messages written to yourself in your email, and your available connection drops from 20 megabits a second to 1.5.

I did it. I finally made the switch to an all-wireless network. I gave up a little bit of performance, but I will definitely not miss the yards of network cable snaking around corners, strung along ceiling molding, and tucked under the doors that separate my Geek Den of a bedroom from my cable modem.

You may have reservations about converting your network to an all-wireless setup. I won’t lie to you: Jumping to a wireless solution does impact your total transfer speeds. You have to realistically assess just how much of your wired connection you’re actually using, and whether faster file-transfer speeds are worth the potential inconvenience, cost, and cable management.