sharing net acesss

[problemchild]

Routers are the most expensive.

Depends on what kind of router you're talking about. An old P-90 can be had for about $25-50 these days, and a good iptables script can turn it into a router easily. If you're talking about a Cisco, however....

we call a large box that connects up to 25 computers a switch: and a small one a router or hub.

HTRegz is correct. Just to clear up any confusion, all 3 of these things are completely different beasts, and the distinction is not related to how many boxes they connect. Using a hub, when node1 sends information to node2, the hub broadcasts that information to *all* the nodes connected to that hub, so nodes 3, 4, 5, and 6 will receive the same information as node2. They simply ignore it because it isn't intended for them. This creates a lot of unnecessary traffic and packet "collisions" that can slow down the performance of the whole network. This is also how packet sniffers work. If node1 sends a private message to node2, node3 can be put into what's called promiscuous mode and told *not* to ignore the traffic meant for node2 and thereby intercept the communication.

A switch only transmits the information to the node that it was intended for and doesn't broadcast the traffic all over the network. This reduces chatter and speeds up network performance, as well as reducing the chance that someone might be listening with a packet sniffer somewhere on the subnet.

Hubs and switches connect computers on a single network or subnet, whereas routers connect different networks or subnets together (i.e., connecting a private LAN to the Internet or communicating between 2 subnets).

So for pinkpanther's problem, you need either a hub or a switch to connect all the machines on the home network together, and then you need a router to connect the whole thing to the Internet.

[IKnowNot]

I could be wrong, but I think this is a getting a little off topic, and a little bit out of the realm of A.O.

pinkpanther: Windoz will do what you want since Win98SE. Linux will do it since, ...., since Linux. Mees thinks you are being a bit too hasty, trying to take shortcuts and get A.O. to set things up for you; most will be glade to help, but you need to read the docs, tuts, and man pages.

start with
The Network Administrators' Guide

as far as the nic in Linux, If you have the same type nic for eth0 and eth1 you MUST load the driver as a module, not compiled into the kernel, or Linux won't recognize the second nic.

Also, I have found RH less then intuitive about setting up routing tables correctly. See above link for explanation of what they should look like.

[oddball]

Yes I thought it was a bit funny, but its their ISP and thay call the shots. "blueyonder.co.uk"
Each NIC I have installed has its own unique MAC address, blueyonder requires that MAC address before I can connect "we are talking about a DSL here", when I first connected a engineer came round and installed some cheap £12.00 NIC card, blueyonder charged me £75.00 for it, but you live and learn. The following day I replaced the card with a netgear. When the new card was installed, I could not connect to the net. I phoned blueyonder who explaned thay would need the mac address of the card before thay could connect me, so I pinged the card got the mac address gave it to them over the phone and behold I was connected. Its not a restriction in one way, as at any time I can connect to the selfcare section of the site and choose which of the two MAC addresses to use ( its now three MAC addresses I have registered ). but it is a restriction as I can only use one MAC address at a time, which ensures I only have one computer connected at any time. Hence the need for a router, to connect all three computers. Looking at it from another point of view, only the Mac addresses I have registered can use my connection to connect, this prevents abuse by dodgy engineers whom will splice into someones cable for £50.00, allowing unwelcome persons free access to www at my expence. Remember DSL is basicly just a lan connection, I dont understand it all but it works. I hope this clears up the misunderstading.