I think there is a lot of misinformation going on in this thread. First of all, because I don't think you are explaining what you need correctly using the right terminology.
We need to know how your cable modem connects to your network. Is it a card that plugs into one of your machines or is it a stand alone device with an ethernet RJ45 10bT jack?
Is the cable modem itself a router? Do you have multiple IPs assigned by your ISP? Basically, how did your ISP want you to hook it up? That should tell us what kind of device it is.
In the International Standards Organization's Open Systems Interconnection model (ISO's OSI model) there are 7 layers. These are Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, and Application. The Physical layer basically is the encoding of the bits onto the line. The Data Link layer controls node-to-node delivery with out errors on the same subnet of a single data unit. The network layer controls end-to-end delivery between subnets of a single packet. The Transport Lyaer is responsible for end-to-end delivery of the entire message. The session layer controls establishing, synchronizing, and closing of a session. The persentation layer is the API between the software and the hardware. The Application layer is the software.
The levels of devices are repeaters/hubs, switches, routers, and gateways. Repeaters and hubs deal with layer 1. Switches deal with layers 1 and 2. Routers deal with layers 1-3. Gateways deal with layers 1-7. This is somewhat simplified, there are some "smart switches" that look into layer 3. However, overall this is pretty accurate.
Now you probably need a hub or a switch to connect all your machines together. Then depending whether the cable modem itself is a router you may need a router between the cable modem and your internal network.
If you only have one IP address assigned by your ISP you will need to do network address translation (NAT) and use one of the reserved blocks of IPs.
Then one also needs to consider whether you care about people breaking into your home network and whether you want to set up a firewall or not. For reference packet-filtering is just an activity of a router. Stateful packet filtering (SPF) or proxying is an activity of a gateway. Some people call simple packet filters firewalls, they really aren't. I only consider something a firewall if its a gateway.
For example here is how my connection to the net works:
ISP backbone router
|
Redback
|
switch
|
DSLAM
|
DSL modem (set to transparent/bridging mode)
|
firewall
|
switch x hub -
||||||| |||
C1||||| C6||
C2|||| C7|
C3||| P2
C4||
C5|
P1
Between the switch and the hub it uses a crossover port.
The reason you are getting so many different answers is because people don't know whether you need a hub/switch or router. My guess is you probably need both.
I use a Netgear FS108 switch and a Netgear EN104 (If someone comes over with 10b2 we can do that too.)
Linux boxen make great routers and firewalls. I have the internal interface on my firewall IP aliased to the 10.x reserved subnet and my real subnet since I have 8 real IPs. The 10.x is DHCP so someone can just come over plug in there machine assign it to "Obtain an IP address automatically" and it configures everything for them.
If your DSL modem is a card in one of your machines, just put in a network card to hook it up to a switch and your other machines and install some software to do firewalling/routing and NAT if necessary.
If you need a router and don't want to set-up a computer to do it, Netopia makes decent cheap routers. Cisco makes the best, but they are way out of your price range. The Netgear RT311 $119 looks like an affordable solution, but I don't know anything about it.
http://www.netgear.com/products/rt311ds.shtml. I have been happy with all the Netgear hubs and switches I've used, but routers are a whole other category. I have no idea about the security of the "firewall" included. It's probably a packet filter with a few little stateful add-ons for FTP and such. I wouldn't count on it being really secure but it probably would keep out the script kiddies if configured correctly. Asante usually makes dirt cheap products, but they are crap. Stay away from Cabletron too. 3com makes good NICs and decent hubs, stay away from anything higher end then that made by them. Ascend made half decent stuff but Lucent bought them. Their firewall add-on was expensive and had some known security holes in it last time I worked with it (about 2 years ago.) No idea what their current line is.
Hope I haven't lost you completely and provided some useful info.
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