networking question

Hey fellows.

I want to network 2 and only 2 computers together. Do I have to buy a router? Or can I just plug a cat5 cable in between them and be done with it?

You should be able to go directly between two computers. You'll need a crossover cable. It's a cat 5 cable with a different configuration on one end.

A Hub or Switch will be sufficient, that is if you're sharing the net access, switch if you want to dedicate the internet bandwidth to each comp. Router if you're gonna connect 2 or more different networks.

Hope I'm not wrong on this, just recalling what I studied last semester.

You just want the puters to talk to each other, or do you want them to share your cable modem?

You shoulda told me ahead of time, dek... I could have brought a 4 port hub down to you (I have a spare laying around).

mail it to me, and i will mail you the cost of mailing it! yay! ;)

and yes, i'm going to want to share the internet connection as well as the printer.

You've got a coupla options to look @ then if you want to share the broadband.

The simplest and bestest is to invest in a broadband router (I've seen between $80-140; haven't priced in a while tho). It will do the DHCP for any PC's you hook up to it (i.p. serving)--plus they usually have a built in firewall too.

If you want to do it the cheap way with the borrowed-forever hub from Dan, then you have some other hurdles to jump over. Your broadband is prolly only allocating 1 i.p. for you--usually you can pay an extra $5-7 per month and get an additional i.p. (for the other puter). Lots of times they register the MAC address for your ethernet card too (my broadband router allows me to clone the MAC addy from my PC up to the router--oooooo, magic!). Your option then (if you don't wanna pay for additional i.p.'s) is to run NAT software on one of the pc's. Network Address Translation assigns internal i.p.'s to the other puters (kinda like the broadband router does), but it does all the routing for all the traffic through this pc. I had troubles with trying to run NAT software with some applications (identd problems with mIRC, for example). I believe the cost of the NAT software was around $35-40...

i need a broadband router then. what's a good brand?

3com, Intel, Linksys

I've heard good things about Linksys (price/performance); I've got a SMC and have had zero problems.

My dad has an SMC...works good I think.