General912 Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 Hey i got a netgear switch and im wondering if i would need a router for a cable connection? I would think that i wouldent. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeMoN Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 if you have more then one computer you will need a router because with cable you only get on ip address and you can only have one computer with that ip address. but with the router you could have up to 256 computers on one ip address Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
exeter_acres Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 to simplify it... a switch just broadcasts a signal all over the place (sort of...) while a router w/ NAT would assign an IP address to each computer and the router would take on the IP from your ISP.... so any computer that is behind a router basically doesn't exist to the outside world.... while all computers 'behind' a switch do... Most ISP's only allow "one" connection... so that would be your router.. Ok. OK.. Now I am confused... I will tell you this.. Tried to connect to my ISP with a switch and only one computer can connect at a time... if you want to connect more than one computer at the same time, you will need a router Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrusk Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 a switch filters traffic based on mac address(media access control) tables and a router filters addresses via the ip addresses (logical link control). When you isp gives you a high speed connection they assign you one id addresse, wether it be static or dynamic. usually you will only have one computer on the internet thus the need for only one ip addresse, however if you want to share a connection with more computers you will need to basically fool the isp into thinking all of that traffic is coming from just one ip adresse(the one assigned by the isp) In order to do this you would implore a router. What the router will do is assign a private networking addresse to your computers (class c ip adresses, 19.168.1.1 etc...) The reason these are called private ip addresse is because they are not usable on the internet, only class A and B are. heres a link that explains the classes of ip addresses. Anyway once the router assigns the private network adresses to your computers, then the router will basically be where all the traffic through that one ip addresse flows through, And whenever your computer sends out a request for data the router will change the ip addresse of the packet so that it gets to and from the destination, however the mac addresse of the packet will stay the same, that way when the acknoledgment comes back it will have the router ip address then your computers mac address, and when the router sees that it will send the packet through the switch straight to your computer. The reason it is able to do this is because in the ARP tables or DHCP tables the router and computer have a list of ip adresses that belong to each physical address, therefore when it gets the packet with your mac address it zips it accross to your computer. Also once a switch builds its mac address tables the signals that travel accross will go straight to the necassary node. Unlike with a hub where it is basically a *dumb* device, that just repeats the signal to every node on the chain, thats why switch are more efficient because they're not broadcasting to every node. Anyway i just explained the basics of the Physical and Data link control layers of the OSI model, If youve never taken any network classes you probably dont know what that is. Anyway i dont know why i got so long winded on that one but now my fingers are tired. And if you dont feel like reading my longwinded post, if youre computer is on a switch and you dont want to take it off the network then you will need a router to access the internet, otherwise you could just unplug your computer from the switch and plug it into the modem. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
exeter_acres Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 What he said... I just didn't feeling like typing it, nor could I have described it soooo well!! Nice work And... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
General912 Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 well couldent i have two nics in like a server then i would share the internet connection wouldent that work? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
localguru Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 yes if you set up a router on that machines, or turned on internet sharing on windows or somerthing. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrusk Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 yes that would work, youre talking about ICS(internet connection sharing) that comes built into windows right? That does work, while there are some bugs with it. Basically all your doing with that is making your computer the router, which will work just fine, only problem is that if your computer is the one runnig ICS your computer will always have to be on in order for the other computers to get access to the internet as well as any shard printers that are connected to your computer. I used to use that before i got a router a couple years ago when xp first came out, and i had a lot of problems where the internet just wouldnt work sometimes and id have to reboot a lot to get it to work. Its not perfect but if you done want to spend the money on a router id say go for it. There are also serveral other ways that people could get access to the internet like setting up a proxy server on your computer and reconfiguring each other computer to use that proxy when connecting the internet but that is a pretty big hassle, i would say just stick with the internet connectio sharing. My first post is due to a CCNA education, which i find absolutley fascinating! Who knew that cisco routers were so much fun to configure router>en passwrod:@#$@% router#config t router (config)#hostname OCCRocks OCCRocks#config t OCCRocks (config)# Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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