First off, the situation. I have two desktop PC's and one Laptop (my 5690). I frequently have LAN parties in my home with up to 7 or 8 PC's total hooked through my home LAN.
Problem 1: My ISP (cable provider) only allows 3 computers per connection (on non business accounts). Therefore, whenever I have friends over, rather than just plugging into my POS linksys antique hub and playing, we have to go around to all the machines and manually give them IP address'. After which, not a computer in the household can surf the web until we are done. I would like the ability to connect more than 3 computers to the internet through my cable provider when more than 3 computers are in the house, but I can't afford the $150 per month to upgrade to a commercial account. I have heard a router will solve this problem (getting one IP address for the router, and the router then divvying up address' for each computer without a need to request one from the ISP). However, this plays into my next problem.
Problem 2: I want to upgrade my network to be Gigabit capable. I routinely transfer large files from one system to another, and if I'm going to spend the money to upgrade my network, I want it to be around for a few years. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a router that has wireless capabilities and gigabit wire support as well. What I'm considering is getting an 8 port switch that is gigabit capable, then uplinking it to a wireless router, and uplinking that to my internet connection. The question is, would the router be able to divvy up IP address' to all the computers being uplinked from the switch, or would I still have the same problem with only 3 computers being able to access the internet? This seems to be my only option if I want to include wireless into
Problem 3: If everything above gets worked out, will I need any special cables for gigabit networking, or will the standard CAT5 cable work? I saw a CAT6 cable at RadioShack today that said it was ready for Gigabit technology, but the CAT5 cables just stated 10/100. It could have been old inventory. So I'm not sure on that one. Has anyone tried Gigabit networking yet? Is there that big an increase in data transfer speeds? Can today's IDE technology (ATA100 and higher) keep up with the transfer speeds of the network at 1000Mbps? I would assume the hard drive write speed/data transfer speed would still be faster, even at 7200RPM ATA100.. but I hate assuming.
Problem 1: My ISP (cable provider) only allows 3 computers per connection (on non business accounts). Therefore, whenever I have friends over, rather than just plugging into my POS linksys antique hub and playing, we have to go around to all the machines and manually give them IP address'. After which, not a computer in the household can surf the web until we are done. I would like the ability to connect more than 3 computers to the internet through my cable provider when more than 3 computers are in the house, but I can't afford the $150 per month to upgrade to a commercial account. I have heard a router will solve this problem (getting one IP address for the router, and the router then divvying up address' for each computer without a need to request one from the ISP). However, this plays into my next problem.
Problem 2: I want to upgrade my network to be Gigabit capable. I routinely transfer large files from one system to another, and if I'm going to spend the money to upgrade my network, I want it to be around for a few years. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a router that has wireless capabilities and gigabit wire support as well. What I'm considering is getting an 8 port switch that is gigabit capable, then uplinking it to a wireless router, and uplinking that to my internet connection. The question is, would the router be able to divvy up IP address' to all the computers being uplinked from the switch, or would I still have the same problem with only 3 computers being able to access the internet? This seems to be my only option if I want to include wireless into
Problem 3: If everything above gets worked out, will I need any special cables for gigabit networking, or will the standard CAT5 cable work? I saw a CAT6 cable at RadioShack today that said it was ready for Gigabit technology, but the CAT5 cables just stated 10/100. It could have been old inventory. So I'm not sure on that one. Has anyone tried Gigabit networking yet? Is there that big an increase in data transfer speeds? Can today's IDE technology (ATA100 and higher) keep up with the transfer speeds of the network at 1000Mbps? I would assume the hard drive write speed/data transfer speed would still be faster, even at 7200RPM ATA100.. but I hate assuming.
