Which you choose for your own network basically comes down to what kind of Macs you want to connect and what you plan to do with the network. That and time and money. Time and money always seem to end up in the equation somewhere. Ethernet is the most-used kind of networking in both homes and offices these days. Ethernet is a significant step beyond slower LocalTalk networks by a factor of forty times or more.
Ethernet also presents a wider variety of network options, with an array of new terminology.
This page seeks to reduce the baffle and help you figure out what you do and don't need to know about setting up an Ethernet network. If you've done a network setup or two, you know something about networking and how to make it work on your Mac. What you may not have known, though, is that you can use all of these same programs from the internet on your own personal or office network. An intranet is simply a network based on the same formats and programs as the internet, but that runs on your own Mac. If we could just somehow get rid of all these wires, life would become so simple and efficient.