Setting up Cable

[JoeTheOdd]

I'm getting cable pretty soon, and I'm going to be networking my home. The only problem is, I have no idea how I'd do this.

I assume I'm going to get an ethernet hub, hooked directly to this computer and a cable modem. It'll also be hooked to a wireless base station (for the other PC), and an AirPort base station (for two Mac's). The other PC will have a wireless card in it, to communicate with the wireless base station, and the iMac's will have AirPort cards. Would this work, allowing each computer to actively use the internet at the same time?

Also, I'm a rather advanced computer user, and I'd be hosting some various servers. How would I go about forewarding certain ports on a single domain, dirrected to my cable modem's IP address, to certain computers?

Thanks in advanced.

 

[SHAWN]

http://www.micronux.com/catalog/images/products/net_netgear_mr814_diagram.jpg

 

[rememberme]

Well you can't always hook a modem directly to a hub, you would be better off hooking the modem to a wireless router. This will share the intenet connection to all of the wireless computers and laptops, while offering up to four wired connections for those computers which don't have wireless capabilities.

The Macs and Wintels should all be able to use the same hardware as one another.

 

[JoeTheOdd]

Hrm, the Macs would probably be right next to eachother, so should I hook my modem to a wireless router, and put another wireless router on a hub with my macs, and my Windows boxes have wireless cards?

 

[rememberme]

You only need one wireless router if you have one internet connection. I suggest buying a wireless router, plugging your cable modem into the WAN slot on the router, opening up the Macs and Desktop PCs and installing a wireless PCI card in them.

It will only save you a few quid sharing wireless hardware between computers and the performance may be affected, so I would just go for a wireless card in each machine, regardless of their distance apart... You could wire both Macs up with a crossover and install a wireless card in just one of them, but again you save hardly anything and you have to make complicated configurations and stuff which is not worth the effort!