Networking "newbie"

[Impact55]

Heres the deal-- I'm build another computer soon, right now have , will keep the new computer in my room with the modem... Can I just get 3 NIC's ( for 3 computers) and a hub or switch to share the same static IP adress ( anyway possible? ) or do I have to get a router? Also if a router which one do you reccommend, some say LinkSys is ok, some say it sucks 🙂

 

[bahree]

Impact55,
I am not sure I fillow your question but from what I can gather you are looking at connecting multiple machine @ the same time to the internet. I use LinkSys and I am very happy with it. You can use one static IP for the router (which has a DHCP server) inbuilt so all the other machine on yur network will get dynamic IP's from the router.

The LinkSys already has a 4-port hub - so you do not have 2 buy a new hub.

Hope this helps,
Amit.

 

[BCYL]

Aside from using the router, you can use 4 NICs to connect 3 machines... your new machine with the modem will need 2 NICs in it, one for connecting to the modem and the other for connecting to the LAN.... then you need 1 NIC in each of your other machines for the LAN...

Next all you need is some kind of NAT software to share the connection...

 

[jinsonxu]

Hmm, i'm in a similar position. I'm building 5 systems for my friends next week and i gotta have to connect them for data transfer.

Do i really need a router?

 

[Zxcvbnm]

you don't really need a router. you can use one of the computer to act as a router, make sure this one is always more often than the others since the others have to go through this so called routing computer to access the net. # of computers + 1 = # of NIC you will need for this job, and a hub/switch of course. good luck

 

[Wik]

www.practicallynetworked.com will answer most of the simple questions on how to network and also sharing the internet. Please go there and read, I am sure this will help you alot.