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Lan & Cable Modem What To Get?

H

HWF

Member
Subject says it all.
What do you see as a good value and good support, for these products? Please be detailed with your suggestions.

My cable modem and cable internet service should be ready Friday afternoon. I have suffered for a couple of years with 26,400
connect speeds at best.

I have two computers and one IP address from COX CABLE if this helps. I would like for both computers to have access to the Internet and also be on a LAN system.

Now I maybe like some of you and have limited funds AXIA CPU Geforce 3 and on and on if you follow my dollar drain. But yet I like quality stuff and value.

I have zip experience with any of the above (Networking or Cable Internet) but have handled my upgrades and system building for several years.

Please suggest a good package or parts so I get off to a good start. Then watch out cause I would like to get into some online gaming and I might just smoke ya.

Thanks
HWF
 
I just started with the whole networking thing a few months ago myself, but it is soo easy to set up a home LAN. Make sure you have a NIC in each one of your computers that you want on the LAN. Next, purchase a router. I use the Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL Router, you can get it at any computer hardware store. I would think the cable company would supply you with your modem, but if they don't you can probably ask them about a place that does sell them. I would not go with an internal modem, make sure it is external. I have a SURFboard cable modem by General Instruments. I've had it for 2 years and never had a problem. You'll also need some cat5 wire which you can buy at any hardware store by the spool, or just buy them already made at radio shack, EB, CompUSA, etc.

This is how you'll set it up. Both of your cat5 cables from your computers go into one of the ports in your router. The modem plugs into your WAN connection. Configure everything in Network Properties and you should be running just fine. Make sure to enable file/print sharing and TCP/IP. That's it. Home LAN.

If you got anymore questions just ask.
 
If your on a tight budget you can do the following also. It will take three nics and one server. Your cable comp. will most likely supply U with the modem and a NIC. What you do is document all the settings for the modem. Then you set up a server with two NICS. first get you server and client running (which means disabling your sec NIC) Set your server's IP to one that is not web based (192.168.0.1) after the network is up and running set up your 2nd NIC by enabling it and putting all the settings that the cable comp. set up. That should do it. If you want to tweak the modem to open up the pipe try www.speedguide.net It involves some registry tweaking so back up the reg. just in case. I used it and I now DL @ 450K/sec. depending on the site.
 
May be something a little easier for you since you don't have a lot of networking experience, it will also be less dollar wise in hardware and you could probably throw it together from spare parts. You will need two nic's, proc, board, ram and a floppy drive. No hd or cdrom are needed! Go to bbiagent.net and check there hcl to make sure you have two nics that are compatabile. Once you do have the two nics throw them in a machine with the rest of the components(minus hd and cdrom of course). Go to the bbiagent page again and fill in your documented numbers from your cable modem and write there image to the disk per the instructions on there page. Viola almost free router/firewall. I have an old ibm 133 with two realtek nics and only 64mb ram(72pin simms at that!) and it has worked perfectly handleing as many as 15 machines at one time at a lan party. Oh yeah it also acts as a dhcp server too so no more assigning ips for your internal network by hand. Enjoy!
 
no extra nics or building a router yourself....Perfect router for your situation, get this while it's hot:
SMC's Barricade router for $40 with print server...must buy from amazon and do it before June 10 read more about it in this thread

I couln't resist this when I saw it.....so jumped on it myself
 
OK Here where I am at. Cable modem is in and is much faster than my dial up through isa modem.

I give given 3 nic cards D-Link DFE-530TX 10/100. So this saves some money.

Which router do you recommend D-Link DI 704 or Linksys BEFSR41 V2 the latter seems on average about 10 to 20 bucks higher.

I do appreciate the time taken for your posts.

Thanks
 
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