I have had a cable modem for over a year with the Linksys 4 port network hooked up two thress computers that are all operating windows XP....it was a breze to hook up. Cable company will never no. Neighbor also has network on his 4 computers also using Linksys system. Good luck, Pat
Save some small amount of money and give up some security? Not a good trade here. Get that router in there please!
You don't need a router, just a firewall. In the windows sharing case mentioned above, the computer _is_ acting as a router (and can probably do NAT as well.) nitro
The SMC Barricade is like 45 bucks and only shows one IP to the cable company. Works well. Plus, I have never seen any issues with hackers using this.
MeDinky, It depends on the configuration of your network and its capacity to hiding the MAC addresses of your PCs; that's called "MAC spoof'; look wether your router supports that or not. Here is an excellent refrence(book) on Home Networking that you can get for less than 25$ and will save your life: Home networking: survival guide by David Strom, Osborn/McGraw-Hill, ISBN: 0-07-219311-5, actually I use this book for my home networking course. Good luck.
While that is inherently true, it also requires some configuration knowledge. I can't tell you how many times I have gone to users setups and shown them the holes that are left open because they didn't understand the proper way to set it up. A firewall is only as good as the person who sets it up understands.
802.11b is fine for almost all uses: Also, it has advantages with respect to range. 11G is still not standardized. Use a router: one the cable side it just connects to the providers network. On your side (the office) it provides DHCP and DNS which it passes through to the provider side. They wont know unless they did a detailed traffic analysis of your connection and it would be cost prohibitive (for now and the near future) for the provider to attempt this .....
It's almost embarrassing how uninformed I am about all this stuff. So I feel awkward even asking questions, but since I am confused, where better to ask? I just recently bought a laptop computer (Toshiba). I have a cable modem hooked up to my son's desktop, and a Linksys wireless router and a wireless linksys card plugged into my laptop. When it works, it seems to work quite well (for some reason, the speed test at http://www.bandwidthplace.com seems to show I am actually connecting faster with the laptop than my son is while he is directly connected to the router. So I guess that is my first question...how can this be? Next question...my internet connection has been going down very frequently the past few days. This is corrected (temporarily) by unplugging the cable modem and letting it re-set. But then after a short time, it happens again. I have a service call scheduled today from the cable company. But my son, who is 17 and while not an expert, is telling me that his friends who ARE self proclaimed experts are telling him the problem is most likely a "router port triggering" issue....whatever that means Third question....now that I have owned my laptop and the linksys stuff for a month, Intel has come out with their "Centrino" technology. What is it? Was my timing bad? Is this technology really different than what I have? Or is it just a proprietary Intel version of what I am using? I have gone to the Intel website, and learned nothing...Anyone care to explain if I missed the boat? Or if this is just another name for what I already have? Last question. What is the difference (or meaning of) Bluetooth technology compared to the technology I am presently using. Any clarification is greatly appreciated. Thanks, and Peace, Rs7