Home Network

If you want to share a cable modem among multiple computers, you will need the network wiring (Cat5) a network card in each computer and some sort of sharing device.

I think the easiest approach is to purchase one of the Cable/DSL routers with a built-in network switch. My favorite is the Linksys but D-Link makes a credible product as well. These routers provide all the functions you need in one box for about $125-$200 and the LinkSys comes in both 4-port and 8-port models.

Alternately,if you're trying to do this at minimum cost, you can use Windows98SE or W2K on one of the workstations and use the built-in Internet Connection Sharing functionality. This workstation will require two network cards and you will have to purchase a separate hub or switch for the network function so you'll probably save $35-40 over the cost of a Cable/DSL router with a switch built-in.

Also, just for the record, what the cable company would prefer is that you plug the cable modem into a hub and lease an IP address from them for each additional computer (usually about $7 per month additional per computer). In my experience, if you don't use that option, they won't squawk too much about your home network as long as you don't expect them tosupport the network part of it. If you have any problems, they will usually ask you to bypass your Cable/DSL router for troubleshooting purposes and plug your workstation directly into the cable modem.

As far as Win98 versus W2K for the younger folks, my kids' ages are from 3 to 13 and they don't seem to notice much difference between the two. They do have some older hardware and software that seems to run better with Win98; on the other hand I prefer my ability to protect their desktop with W2K.

paul

For this situation I think can reduce the cost of setup this type of network. Seem you have already the cable and network card, so is easy to solve this problem.

You can fix the CAT 5 wires to crossing link cable but this type is limited to 2 units of PC only. However, it is very very cheap network setup. Where the wires is linked between two computer and configuration the Operating System to Share Internet Connection.

I hope this type of network setup will make you easy. Anything contract me by email.

You can get away with a cheap hub, and using one of the PCs as your "gateway". However, I've found that this is just leading to problems.

Therefore I stongly recommend that these systems are setup behind one of the many "Cable/DSL Routers" on themarket. Asante, LinkSYS, etc. all make nice boxes. These are 4 or 8 port switches with a firewall capability. If/when you need more ports you just buy a matching hub.

Some of these boxes come with some neat added features like a built-in print server and a comm port to which you attach an analogue modem as a backup to your broadband (cool!).

Your home LAN should be cat5 (forget the cat3) wires and jacks.

My home LAN has a Win98 for the kids and their (friggin') Napster junk. It runs the broadest range of games and multimedia funny stuff. My wife's is a WinME. It shipped from the OEM that way and as long as we don't add any software it runs fine. My system is W2K. I just make sure the virus software is up to date on all the boxes, and every once in a while clean them all up.

The cheapest solution is to install multiple nics into one computer and run a product like WINPROXY to proxy between each of the network cards. I have done this with a USB NIC and a regular NIC. I believe the WINPROXY is around $50 for two users and two nics are $5-10 per nic.

Although this is the cheapest, I would not recommend this for serious users. I would pruchase a Linksys or D-Link DSL/CableModem/Wireless router. Not only do you get the product for NAT, DHCP, and hub but also a moderately good firewall and in some cases content filtering for the kidies. If you require VPN, the products should support VPNs.

Good Luck