Router or Switch or Hub?

[crowndale]

I do some PC support work for a locally-based national charity, and have recently moved them to a new office which was cabled with cat5e. I've scrounged an 8 port hub, and now have their 6 PCs working happily together, one of which has a dial-up internet connection. The PCs are currently all Windows 98SE, and the network protocol is Microsoft NetBEUI.

My next project is to switch to Broadband (ADSL) and I need to know what hardware I need to buy; being a charity money is in short supply! I guess that I'll need an ADSL modem and router, possible combined, but will I still be able to use the hub with this or do I need to buy an 8 port router? I appreciate that I'll have to move from NetBEUI to TCP/IP. Any advice will be very much appreciated.

 

[nstreet]

You should be able to plug the router into the hub, then all of the pc's will be able to access the internet if you have the ip address of the router as the default gateway. Get a combined router/adsl modem to make life easier and reduce costs.

 

[Meblin]

One down side of a hub is that it sends information to all links (you will see all connection lights flash at the same time). A Switch will only communicate to the links talking to one another. Most routers have 4 ports so you could use some of the routers ports, for the machines that have the heaviest usage, and then the hub for the remainder.

A combined router/modem is much better than using one of the PCs as the link (as you have at the moment).

One other thing to note is the routers compatibility with your ISP. Check what the requirements are and make sure the router is compatible. Also make sure it has NAT an Web page interface (to allow you to easily set it up).

Then as long as your machines all have similar IP addresses, the same subnet mask and the default gateway is set to the IP address of the Router then everything should be hunky dory! You can also get the router to be a DHCP server and assign IP settings to each machine as required.

Meblin

 

[DaveAngel]

You will have difficulties using a router and NETBeui, switch to TCP/IP

 

[DaveAngel]

Use a standard 'free' ip range, i suggest 10.0.1.X

Give each machine a different ip address, suggest 10.0.1.10, 10.0.1.11 etc

assign an Ip address to the router (you may have to change the Ip of the machine you are using to talk to the router into the same range, probably 192.168.X.X it will tell you the default IP of the router in the manual, make the PC your using to communicate with it diffrent in the last set of digits only)

Change the Ip address of the router into the range you wish to use i.e 10.0.1.254

Set the subnet masks of all the machines to 255.255.255.0

Set the default gateway to 10.0.1.254

Your hub will pug straight into the router - if it is a non-auto sensing hub you will need to use the uplink port

 

[Igorian]

Just to follow on from what the others have said, Most routers incorporate a DHCP server, so can provide IP addresses for each client automatically. I can recommend the 3COM Office connect ADSL modem/router, which also incorporates a SPI firewall. Change the hub to a switch as suggested earlier for more efficient traffic management.

 

[simonbridge]

Just a couple of additional points!

Definitely buy a router/modem with an SPI firewall built in, then NAT addresses internally to a statically assigned IP address (check your ISP can give you this otherwise you'll be mucking about with dyndns), this will mean that you can remotely administer this project from home. Linksys do great small combined units. Mind you everyone does really! www.linksys.com

Definitely TCP/IP
Hub/Switch, makes no difference on the bandwidth you can use. Generally the difference is: A 100Mbit hub shares its bandwidth all the time across ports (e.g 100/8= 12.5Mbits per port for 8 port hub), Switch will give 100Mbits to each port. however your ADSL connection is only 0.5Mbit (or 1 or 2 Mbit). Theefore no issue unless you are also sharing big files across the network.

If you can afford it switch it, if you can't .... forget it.
Simon

 

[AdamW]

I would go for static IPs on the network too: DHCP is great when it works but when it goes t*ts up (which it does) it can be a nightmare to trace the problem.

Pipex (and probably some other ISPs) use "sticky" IP addresses. This is effectively a static internet IP, but without any charge. Mine hasn't changed in 2 and a half years, but it wouldn't cause any problems with 99% of software if it did. The job of the router is to ensure this! The 1% it would cause problems with would be things that require IP tunnelling, such as peer-to-peer networks... which I doubt a charity would be making great use of!

 

[2scoops0406]

I would go for static IPs on the network too: DHCP is great when it works but when it goes t*ts up (which it does) it can be a nightmare to trace the problem.

Pipex (and probably some other ISPs) use "sticky" IP addresses. This is effectively a static internet IP, but without any charge. Mine hasn't changed in 2 and a half years, but it wouldn't cause any problems with 99% of software if it did. The job of the router is to ensure this! The 1% it would cause problems with would be things that require IP tunnelling, such as peer-to-peer networks... which I doubt a charity would be making great use of!

VPN access also, but then you just use a static, and NAT.