ICS vs Router

Home Networking.

ICS vs Router.

And my thinking

When setting up a home network I beleive we are far better off to use a Router instead of Internet Connection Sharing. ICS requires one certain machine to be on at all times. ( I believe as I never did use ICS. ) The Router does not.

Yes. The cost is a bit more. And you still need a Software Firewall.

More cabling involved ? Not sure about that part as I think with ICS you still need a cable between machine don't you ?

But I don't think Benifts of a Router can be beat.

1-- As Newt pointed out a Hardware Firewall and NAT are very hard to crack.
2--ICS is all Software ( I think )
3-- The benifit of not having to rely on ONE machine is great.
4--Having a Router/Switch with a Print Server ( what I now have working ) can be what I think to be a great benift also.

But the BIGGEST benifit as far as I can see is NOT HAVING to rely on just one machine. I have three machines and NONE of them rely on any other for anything. But they will still connect to play games, Transfer files etc. They did rely on this one till I got the Print Server installed and working.

If my machine goes down or I am working on it, it has no effect on the other two at all.

BillyBob

 

Exactly my thoughts BB with one exception.

If you buy a router/switch with a good firewall, you don't need firewalls on the PCs. The router one will deal with all the junk and is lots faster and almost impossible for a virus or similar to disable.

Otherwise you nailed it 100%.

 

Thanks Newt

I am thinking about shutting down the Firewall ( software ).

It is being a real pain over the LAN. I found the Firewall was stopping me from pinging this machine from other machines and was the cause of Network games not connecting properly.

BillyBob

 

I just made the change over from a proxy-served LAN to a DSL modem with a built in router. It's far superior to have the machines work independently (only one needs to be on, for instance) and not to rely on the resources of one machine to do all the grunt work of caching everything for the second machine.

I had ZoneAlarm working pretty good so I don't care about the firewall advantage with a router.

One thing that I still don't have right (logged in another post) is that now that I'm using dynamic addressing I do have minor problems with slow browsing of the other machine now and then. But that's just a tweak issue. Otherwise, now that I have the router I'll never go back to ICS.

Oh, ya, now I get to use my MS SQL client to update my DB objects on my remote host because no proxy is involved. Very slick and saves the pain in the butt I had to deal with the proxy.

Later, doods . ..... Paul

 

I like that report.

Now I hope that others that are having problems with ICS read this.

Thanks for posting.

BillyBob