What's the difference between a Hub, a Switch and a Router?

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Hi, I have a Lynksys broadband router that has the typical four LAN ports to connect four computers on the network. If I want to do some LAN gaming with more than four machines, can I connect two routers? Connecting two routers with a standard ethernet cable did not allow the two groups to "see" each other. Do I need to connect the routers with a crossover cable? I want to avoid doing things wirelessly, so any help would be appreciated. Thanks

S. Watson: you really want either a hub or switch to extend your network when you already have a router.

Good Info, but I still do not understand why the
Hub I got on Ebay ( 3Com 100base-tx hub for small
networks model-3c16722 ) would not work on my older 1998 compaq w/ windows 98 but works fine
with newer Hp vectra w/ windows xp pro sp2 on it.
Both computers work fine with the Westell Wire-
speed dsl modem by their selves...Is the Compaq
too slow or is the Nic not going fast enough??

My guess would be that your older computer has a 10mb ethernet port, and that the hub only supports 100mb. I'd check the capabilities of both.

I'd like to know if a person loses alot of connection ping when using a router. I'm using a wireless router and a wireless network adapter for connecting to XBox live. I don't seem to get a very strong connection to the XBox. I was thinking about connecting direct to the XBox. Can I just remove the XBox network adapter and hook it up direct , using my wireless Base Station as a straight router? This won't cause any conflict with my main computer will it? I just want to get into some serious gaming, with a stronger ping. I'm using a Microsoft wireless base station.(G) not (B).

Great site!!

I have a home network configured as follows:

Cable modem TO
8-port Router TO
5 Ethernet Ports (RJ-45) and 1 Wireless Access Point

I'd like to make two printers accessible to computers on the network at all times. However, the room in which I'd like to place them has one ethernet jack and already has a computer.

Based on your site, I think that one solution in this room is to plug a switch into the ethernet jack and plug the computer and a print server into the switch and the printers into the print server. Thus:

Wall ==> Switch ==>
PrintServer ==> Printer
==> Computer

Sorry about the Garbled message earlier. Hit the "tab" key and hadn't realized it until it was too late. Please ignore my attempt to graphically depict my arrangement.

My two questions are:

1. Will the arrangement I described work?
2. Does the wired arrangement with a switch/print server have any advantages over simply attaching a wireless print server to the printers?

Thanks for your help!!

Charles

Plugging a switch, or even just a hub, into the ethernet jack and the other devices into that hub/switch is how I'd approach it.

I have a cable connection going into my modem which then goes into my Linksys wireless router. Due to different statements made by different representitives of my ISP I recently ordered four static IP addresses. I now realize that since I am only connecting to the Internet (and nobody is connecting to me since I dont have a server or anything of the sort) that I only need one IP address and that the router will dynamically issue IP addresses to all of the computers hooked up to my router. The problem is that when we use my 3Com router through wired ports all three computers can access the Internet but when we use the Linksys wireless router we cannot access the Internet. I understand that the wireless device (in this case hooked up to an xbox 360) will be primary since it connects to the wireless port on the router first, and then all three of my computers that are hooked up to cable ports in the wireless router will draw 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. What should I do to get all four devices connected to the Internet? My son really wants to use that xbox 360 online but I am not able to get a cable to it so we must use the wireless for it and the cable for the three computers. But, again, we have not been able to get online with the wireless router from any device when it is hooked up. Sorry for the long set-up and for jumping around so much but its late and Im tired. Any help you can give me would be much appreciated. :)

P.S. I still have all four IP addresses and my ISP says it is the routers fault because it should be assigning dynamic IP addresses and Linksys says I should get the static IP addresses from my ISP and enter them manually... in effect they are blaming each other...but maybe it is I that should be blamed??? :)

Well, in a sense they're both right.

The WAN (Internet) side of the Linksys needs to be configured to use one of the static IP addresses your ISP has assigned you. Different models have different interfaces for this, but on my Linksys that's on the "Setup" screen of the configuration UI -> internet connection type is "Static", and you must fill in a bunch of information relating to your static IP manually.

On the LAN (local) side of the Linksys, it needs to perform "DHCP" which is the protocol that hands out IP addresses to the local computers. On my Linksys's UI, that's on the DHCP tab, and you simply need to make sure that's Enabled.

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