Getting @Home Cable Internet Sevice. Setup suggestions please..

[Electric Amish]

January 20th is the D-Day.

What do you guys recommend for the sharing setup?

Should I get a router/switch? Should I use a spare PC as a gateway/firewall and use NAT32?

I've got 3pcs. One could easily be dropped in as a gateway. All are running Win98SE.

Suggestions and setup specifics (links) are encouraged.

Thanks,

amish

 

[pm]

Congrats, Amish! I remember when we talked about DSL 6-8 months ago. You're going to love cable.

If you have the money ($140) and you are big into convienence, I recommend the router solution. It's elegant and no one needs to leave their computer running 24/7. This is an easy solution that doesn't require much tinkering or much worrying. You can access the router using Netscape/IE from any computer and you don't need to worry about security.

Since you have a spare PC, then this is the cheap solution. You could set it up as a pretty good router, although Win98 has a few memory leaks (did they fix all these in Win98SE?) and so you may have to reboot it once in a while. Setup will be a little harder than the router, but it's not too bad. You might want to consider Linux if you know Unix at all.

Anyway, have fun!

 

[Electric Amish]

I know some linux. I setup a simple router here at work. I don't know if I know enough to make it do what I need. The biggest deal is to be able to game on-line from multiple pc's at once. This may/may not require unique IP addresses. I know there is a little script that you can run with NAT32 that will allow Asheron's Call to work with multiple connections.

I don't know. My knowledge at this detail is very vague.

amish

 

[Polaris13]

Checkout freesco.com, linux router on a floppy, work great, configure everything via browser

 

[office boy]

Don?t let them install the software, all they need to do is give you the computer name, also make sure to get a copy of the work order if you can, it has all the good info on it. IP, DNS, subnet, Gateway, Computer name, node name, and if you have a NIC already installed, then you might be able to talk them into giving you one of their USB nic's (i got a 10/100 after a little sweet talking) They come in handy for hooking someone up quick for a little file sharing, or LAN gaming.

 

[Subversal]

Darn another person on my node! Heh J/k congrats

 

[dcdomain]

If you go the router route (hehehe), the Linksys and SMC Barricade router has been heavily recommended. The Linksys is around $50 more and does not include a print server, but there's a $20 rebate or $30 rebate floating around.