can i use a switch instead of a PC or Laptop to connect my ethernet to , to then wireless rout the conections.

Question

i am trying to figure out if i can use a switch instead of a PC or a laptop (as my starting point) to connect my cable modem to ,through which i can then rout wireless signals using a router to my computers in the house.

Answer 1

Im not understanding what you are saying. You talk about a switch, a router and using a pc or laptop as a server I think.

You need to connect the modem to the cable from the wall.
Then you need to connect the modem to the router(I assume you have a wireless router since you mention wireless also).

The router will have a 4 port switch already built into it and you can add more switches or hubs to the routers switch no problem.

Answer 2

I believe you are confused. Here is how things work.

Your broadband provider (CATV or DSL) terminates with a modem. Some modems have an integrated router built in. I will assume yours does not.

The modem connects to the WAN port of a router. The router also has a LAN port or in many cases 4 LAN ports. These are for downstream pcs to plug into. If you have more wired pcs than you have ports, you plug one of the router LAN ports into a network switch and connect other wired pcs and other LAN devices into the network switch.

Wireless routers also have the ability to communicate to downstream pcs using unlicensed radio broadcast. In this case a wireless interface is needed on the pc (it is now built in to many notebooks but not to many desk top units). In this case the radio broadcast carries the signal in place of the cable.

Having said all the above,

You can connect several pcs onto a LAN. They can be wired, wireless, or a mixture of wired and wireless. You need a router to do this.

Answer 3

No
The purpose of the router is to connect one network ( the internet) to your network ( your network of computers)
Routers have a switch built in
Routers are cheap > they are usually on sale at big box stores to get you in the door ( to buy more computers or stuff)
If you are concerned about maximum speed in a home network ( transferrring large amounts of data at ultra high speed among computers on the network) a stand alone switch can be faster than a router / switch that has to do a number of things.

If you are not or are just browsing the routers is 100s of time faster than the internet
if you do want to use a separate switch then use the router to connect > then turn off the dhcp in the router
attach the switch to a lan port of the router

Unless if you are doing tons of ultra high speed file transfers in your network keep it simple and use a router

- major brands are linksys and dlink
all brands are ok
you can buy a wireless router on sale and turn off the wireless if you want to

Answer 4

That is the only way to go. Even if you only had one computer the added security of the computer being behind a router would be worth it. After many years of resisting I upgrade from a wired router to the Linksys WRT54G router from Walmart. It was painless. I literally was up and running with my new router in minutes.
All you need is a cable or DSL connection.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=2470125