Need Help With Setup

WaxHaX0rS

Member
Dec 2, 2004
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I recently got a laptop and then a wireless router to allow it to connect to the internet wirelessly. I had to mess with settings and configurations that I didn't even understand before I could finally just get it to be able to view webpages and such. I highly doubt this is the most efficient setup because I get medium-slow download speeds most of the time on all of the computers and I think the way I have it set up may be the reason.
These are my components of the network:
Lucent DSLPipe Modem
WRC-1000 Toshiba Wireless Router
Comp1-Windows 2000
Comp2-Windows 2000
Laptop1-Windows 98

This I how I have it set up.

Phone line-->Modem
Modem-->Comp1
Modem-->Comp2
Modem-->WRC-1000
WRC-1000--(via WiFi)-->Laptop

I had to enter the DNS and subnet and whatnot values into the WRC-1000 configuration to get the laptop to view the internet. The WRC-1000 is set to NAT Routing and has the DHCP Server thing (whatever that means, I still don't understand networking very well). Like I said before, I don't know if this is the most efficient setup. I don't really understand this stuff completely, but my GUESS as to why the internet is slower is that the modem evenly divides up the bandwidth between the ports wheras a router would supply bandwidth as needed, is this right? Anyway, I was thinking about switching to the following setup and seeing if it would be any better.

Phone line-->Modem
Modem-->WRC-1000
WRC-1000--(wired)-->Comp1
WRC-1000--(wired)-->Comp2
WRC-1000--(WiFi)-->Laptop1

If I did this setup, what type of settings should I have on the router? The NAT or Bridge or whatever? I have no idea what most of the options that the router gives me mean, and I would need someone to tell me which of these types I would need. Also, the WRC-1000 apparently has a firewall and I'm not sure how that would affect me with gaming or whatever else. If you don't understand my setup or anything else, please ask. Thanks.