Excuse my ignorance

B

bigginge

Guest
Excuse my ignorance, but, though I've been on Macs for years, working from home I've never had much to do with networking. I've just set a G4 up for my wife in an upstairs room and I've got an ethernet cable i had made up for my son when he was at college, so I could connect the 2 macs. However my Mac is connected to the internet via ethernet. I'm sure I know the answer but is this when I need a router so I can connect both Macs and have them on the net?
 
You are correct. You're going to need a router that has multiple LAN ports (so that you can connect multiple computers to it).
 
I use a hub/switch. Same thing, a box with a series of ethernet sockets on it and a mains power connection. Often the term "router" implies a modem as well. I still use the original modem.

However if your new Mac has wireless, then you could buy a wi-fi router/modem and do away with the ethernet cable to the other room. or, as I did, add an Airport Extreme Base station to one of the ports on the hub.

I can now use the iBook anywhere in the house.
 
sgould said:
Often the term "router" implies a modem as well.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily so. There are routers out there that will only route TCP/IP traffic from one network to another...in this case, from his private network to the Internet cloud. Some broadband connections don't even require a modem...just a router.
 
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