Trying to connect my laptop to my router and sometimes connect to the cable modem for faster speeds.?

Question

I have a cable modem that operates at twice the speed as my wireless router. I would like for my laptop to be able to connect wirelessly to the router at times, but also connect to the cable modem via an ethernet cable. Is there a way to setup the cable modem to support this (splitter of some kind).

Answer 1

You can connect a Ethernet hub to the cable modem, netgear sells some inexpensive (<$20) 4 port hubs (may be called an Ethernet switch too). Connect the cable modem to the hub and plug the routers "WAN" connection into the hub.

With Ethernet you can't split the signal like you can with cable TV splitters.

PS -

It doesn't matter how fast the "network" is in your home, what matters is the uplink speed from the cable modem to the service provider network. In most cases the uplink speeds for cable modems or DSL rarely go faster that a couple Mbps. The uplink is the bottleneck. If you go 100Mbps to the cable modem it won't matter.

Answer 2

Actually, if your wireless router is 802.11g or 11a, then it has a throughput or payload speed that is faster than any Cable Modem. The max Cable Modem is 30 Mbps for download (with a typical of 3 Mbps) and a max of 6 Mbps for upload (with a typical of 512 kbps). 802.11g (2.4 GHz band) and 802.11a (5 GHz band) has a raw data rate of 54 Mbps (total of download + upload), while the actual throughput is only about 30 Mbps. 802.11b has 11 Mbps raw data speed. In order to get 30 Mbps download for Cable Modem, you will have to subscribe to the highest Premium Service and even then you will not get that as the link is shared with many other Cable Modem users in your neighborhood.

Your Cable Modem provides you with a single dynamic IP address and the router can translate this single IP address to many "internal" IP addresses (typically 192.168.0.x). This is called NAT or Network Address Translation. Once that is done, you can have many Ethernet ports or Wireless ports through a Wireless LAN Access Point (up to 254). A Wireless Router is essentially a router + Ethernet Switch + Wireless LAN Access Point, all combined into a single unit. If there is only 4 Ethernet Ports coming out of your Wireless Router then to get more Ethernet Ports, you can add another Ethernet Switch in daisy chain fashion. Remember for each NAT from a single dynamic IP address you will get 255 more IP addresses if you are using 192.168.x.x.

You should connect your Cable Modem's Ethernet (WAN) port to the WAN port of the Wireless Router. There should be one or more LAN ports on the Wireless Router which is used to connect your computers. The Wireless (Wi-Fi) is essentially an Ethernet port that can connect to many computers that have wireless NICs.

One more note, your router should also be running DHCP service. This process distributes the NAT'ed IP address to your many PCs that are on the local side of your network, i.e. each computer that starts up will ask for an IP address from the router and it will give out an unused IP address on its list.