Home Lan with a Cable Modem
Apr 13 '00
My cable modem is great; OK, now onto how to setup your Home LAN powered by a cable modem!
There are 2 ways you can go. You can buy a home router/hub from <a href= http://www.us.buy.com/comp/product.asp?sku=10235958 >Buy.com</a> for about 150 bucks. This will allow you to connect your cable modem directly into the router/hub. Then you would attach your home computers via ethernet cable into the hub. This particular router/hub even supports DHCP so it can automatically assign IP addresses to your home puters.
The 2nd way and harder way is to setup a PC to act as a router. You accomplish this by first installing 2 network cards. Depending on how old your hardware is, this could be a nightmare. You mostly likely will have to deal with hardware conflicts and manual IRQ resolution. After you get your cards recognized, you will then have to purchase software that will allow your home users to funnel their internet connection via your router PC. The best product out there is <a href= http://www.winroute.com >WinRoute</a>. WinRoute is the easiest to setup and I have never had it crash [unlike wingate]. The last thing you have to get is a normal hub. A regular 10MB, 4port ethernet hub will run you about 40 bucks.
When you weigh in the costs of buying WinRoute, buying a ethernet hub and having to deal with the IRQ conflicts, it makes more sense to go with the router/hub option. That also seems to be the opinion of most other people cause they're selling like hot cakes!
What option did I do? Well, I did it the hard way. I setup a NT 4.0 box with 2 nic cards. I have my MCSE and I consider myself very technical. I have been doing PC support and web development for more than 7 years now. However, getting NT 4.0 to recognize to NIC cards [they were PCI too], took me 2.5 days of frustration. At the time, there were no cheap hub/router products for less than 400 bucks. For me, it was cheaper to just buy a regular ethernet hub and WinRoute.
Remember, this is not easy. On the bright side, if you're committed and have some patience, you will get your home LAN going and walk away with a much greater knowledge on how home networks operate; I know I did!
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fperkins
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