Router or Switch?

[hackersmovie]

I'm a bit confused here. I need to set up a wired network to share my cable modem. Until now, I've been completely wireless. So I've been doing (very little) research and seem to have gotten confused. Here's the question:

Can I just buy an ethernet switch, connect it to my modem and Macs and everything play nice or do I need an ethernet router? Is there any advantages/disadvantages to either one? Brands?

I'll be connecting 2 Macs and 1 PC . I will most likely be adding a NAS unit as well.

Any insight would be outta sight...
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[Chris..S]

Does your cable modem provide any routing functionality?

You'll need something to do the routing. Most likely your ISPs help/support pages will explain what you need for a home network.

My guess is you'll need a router & hub/switch. Plenty of devices have both together, usually with four LAN ports + WAN port. What you are doing is pretty standard, so its likely any device out there is good enough. Just like the posts here about disk drives, I'm sure some people will have had bad experiences with each brand.

If you are likely to transfer large files - several GB - or stream videos over your LAN try for a gigabit switch.

What I did was buy a second hand (or refurbished) business class firewall router off ebay. You should be able to get one for about the same cost as a new residential router and most likely they will have a better firewall and be more robust. Unfortunately, gigabit is not so common yet, however a netgear FVS124G would do the trick.

[Bobaloo]

You can get a router to set up your wired network. Most routers have 4 inputs, so if you wanted to use the 4th for your airport base, you could do that. Easy to set up, just download Bonjour for the Windows box to be able to share printers. I've got a router I'm not using, it's a Belkin 802.11b wireless that can be used wired. I was using it wired but I used it for maybe a week since it wouldn't work right with my Linksys when I had Vonage. Vonage phone system was in a 3 port router, didn't help me with 4 computers on the network, so I used my original 4 port Linksys router to connect the computers to the network from the Vonage Linksys router. With Verizon fios, the modem and router are combined.
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[walkoflea]

If you want the "best" performance from your network you want a switch. I use a cable modem to a 4 port router with a built in switch for the each port.

[hackersmovie]

[NidStyles]

It seems you don't understand the difference.

A Switch allocates all of the bandwidth of the network to one device at a time, and switch's back and forth if there's multiple devices running through that network.

A Router does what's called load balancing. It takes the sum of the bandwidth and allocates it for the most part evenly through the whole range of devices requesting access to the network it's "routing" for.

For smaller home networks, a switch is faster. Especially if there's only going to be one device accessing the network resources most of the time.
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[hackersmovie]

o.k. I found a "network for dummies" tutorial, it seems I was right. I have to get a router and expand it, if needed, with a switch. . .

Thanks for all your input. . .
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[Pleiades]

[walkoflea]

[herbg]

[hackersmovie]

[herbg]

[walkoflea]

I agree that is a good wireless router. I have an earlier version of the same and it works great and I can access the signal all over my house.