Connecting a bunch of computers to wired ethernet

JMecc

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What's the best way to connect ~10PC's via ethernet in a house?

Right now I have a wireless router with 4 ethernet ports so I plug 4 PC's into the ports and use wireless for my sister's computer but wireless is not great for reliability. I could perhaps get a 5-port router but I want to have many available for when I fix people's computers and I don't think I can get a 10-20 port router. Can I just hook up a router port to a 16-port ethernet switch and plug all of the computers into that switch? Will each computer have its own local address (like 192.168.0.1XX like on a router) and still have internet access? Would this system be slow even if only a few PC's at a time are on the internet? Is there a better way you'd suggest?

Thanks,
Jo
 

grieve

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Your best bet as Evongugg suggested is to purchase a switch.

You can get a 20 port switch for under 100 bucks, it makes life real easy…unpack, plug router into it…away you go.
 

JMecc

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Thanks all! So if a switch can address many local computers, what's the difference between it and a router?

Jo
 

drumr1829

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I just ran into this at my house. I have a buffalo wireless router in the basement and a linksys router upstairs. If you're not going to use a switch, you'll need to disable DHCP on the other (more or less, router's give out DHCP/IP addresses and you don't want two of them trying to do this at the same time, it wont work). The buffalo is connected to the cable modem and handles DHCP. For me the default IP is 192.168.1.1, go to this and disable DHCP. Then connect a cat5 to the LAN port of the other router and you should be good to go.
 

JMecc

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I borrowed a switch from a friend and hooked it up to the output of my router & plugged computers into the switch. The comps get internet but seem to have no way of addressing each other (i.e. when I want to ssh to my server I know it is statically 192.168.0.170). Is there a way to do this; i.e. to mimic a 16-port router by using 2 inexpensive available components?

Thanks,
Jo
 

johnnyq1233

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you have to run the set up a home network utility in my network places so windows can create the environment for your network.
Make sure all the computers are on the same workgroup. default is "MSHOME" or if you creat a new one all should be the same for simplicities sake.
After a few screens you'll be asked to turn on file and printer sharing. This is what allows you to share files and printers in your network.
At the end you'll get several options. Select "just finish the wizard..."and click next or finish.
You need to do this to all the computers you wish to share files with... there's more but first get this done.