Doug Franklin mused: > > Personally, I splurge another US$40 or so and get a dedicated 10/100 > switch and connect the router to the uplink port on the switch and > connect the computers to the regular ports. Some of the "Cable Modem / > DSL" routers put their ports into the DMZ or directly onto the > internet, rather than having them behind the built-in firewall. With a > switch between the computers and the router, they're all behind the > firewall, they're all NAT'ed, and they get their IP addresses from the > router automagically.
All the DSL/Cable Modem routers I've seen have everything behind the "firewall", and use NAT to share a single IP address (which they know how to accquire from your ISP). An additional switch is unnecessary. With a laptop being one of the systems, I'd strongly recommend going for a unit with built-in 802.11 wireless. I'm using the older LinkSys unit here (802.11b) for a wired desktop and two wireless notebooks. Nowadays I'd buy a 802.11g unit - they cost around $69 in the USA.
