On Wednesday 01 February 2006 09:44, Bruce Marshall wrote:
On Wednesday 01 February 2006 06:27, James Knott wrote:
It seems
to be working well enough for the two of them as it is, but I'm just
curious if there's something that might be any better.
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In order to use a switch or hub, you'd need 3 IP addresses from the ISP. If you get only one, you need a "router". Also, those routers provide a firewall function that's essential, if any of the computers is running Windows.
If he already has two computers hooked to the connection and things are working well, then it would appear that whatever box he is currently using is also a router.... and doing NAT.
Thanks to everyone for all the help. I'm slowly getting this network stuff around my head, heh. When I get over to her house, I'll look at the box the switch came in and read it a little more and see what capabilities it has (As Bruce says above, it might be doing some kind of router thing...but then she could also have the 'business package' of the satellite provider and they're allowing more than one connection). I'll try to let everyone know what this switch she'd using does or doesn't do and then be able to use all these suggestions to a better advantage. BTW, the gf and her daughter are both dual-booting, they've both got software firewalls on their M$ partitions. The Linux partitions are SuSE 9.3 on both computers (I got both of them to try it and so far they're both liking it!). JB