Uplink or WAN port?

[Chriz]

When I look at the back of these new Linksys routers, I get kind of confused. I know on my old 3com switch all i have is 4 ports and an uplink port, and I use a crossover cable to go from the uplink port to my cable modem. So which then would you use on the Linksys router, the WAN or the uplink port, and what would be the purpose of the other?

 

[ScottMac]

Use the WAN port to go to the cable modem.

All features are referenced from the WAN port (Forwarding, Filtering, DMZ, etc) and the WAN port is usually only 10 Meg.

The Uplink port is almost certainly 10/100, but usually cannot be used at the same time as the immediately adjacent port (they are the same connection on the transceiver, but the pin-out is swapped.....only one can be in-use at a time).

The Uplink port would be used to add on additional switches, hubs, or other stuff.

SO, there ya go.

FWIW

Scott

 

[heartsurgeon]

ScottMac is absolutely correct.

WAN to cable modem

if you need more ports for your LAN than your router has, use a straight through cable from the uplink port of the router, to any regular port of a switch. in this way you can keep ganging switches together (assuming they each have an uplink port). i think the max ports is 255 that the router will support. the uplink port shares with the port next to it, so you lose use of it when you use the uplink feature.