general network ?

hi. my question is this:
i want to link 3 computers to the internet in the most economical manner.
1st...can all 3 go online at once, and if so surf seperately? (have no clues how this works so please have patience)
2nd...what hardware would i need to do this, if its possible.
3rd...a rep at my local radio shack said it wouldnt be worth doing as im on dial up. but im sure every business out there with network isnt on cable/dsl.
4th...what is FAST ETHERNET? would this be something i could do?

one computer in home is on winxp, others on win98se.

thanx



eMachines 1.0GHz, 256mb, winxp, 20gb

 

You can certainly do what you want. The device you will need is a router/switch with a port for a dial-up modem. Most are made for some sort of broadband like cable or dsl but there are others out there that will also work with a regular modem.

Take a look Here for one brand. I'm sure there are others and a search at http://www.google.com using router switch dial up will give you lots to pick from. The above listing was simply the first I found with that search.

I disagree with the Radio Shack guy. Certainly, a 56K dial-up connection isn't going to be blazing fast with multiple users but the reality is that most of your internet time is spent just sitting somewhere and needing very little bandwidth so most times, a 3 user network using a single modem would have everyone operating at pretty much full speed.

With a device like the one above, your ISP will still see only one user at your location but it will be the router it sees. The router uses a feature called NAT to allow up to 250 users on the same connection.

Fast Ethernet is simply 100Mbs networking with network cards. You will have that speed among your 3 PCs if you use 10/100 cards. It won't have any effect on internet speed since that will be limited to 50K maximum by your modem. Even with broadband, your maximum would still be around 1Mbs or less so no where near as fast as the cards will function. But internally your PCs will communicate with each other at high speed for file transfers, printer sharing, etc.

 

You won't even need the router.
Try this:
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/sharingcable.htm
(I've found it in another thread)

 

Correct on not needing the router as in - it isn't essential. You can certainly get a switch (or a hub if you like old, slow, and dumb but forget FAST ETHERNET with a hub) and use ICS or something to share the modem.

However, the whole experience is so much better IMO if you use a hardware device to do the routing rather than forcing a PC to do it in software. Less prone to cause problems too and easier setup.

And the additional cost of a router/switch vs. a switch or hub is minimal. Since the cost per port of a switch today is about the same as the cost per port of a hub, I also see no sense at all in using the older hub technology even for a 2-3-4 PC home LAN.

 

Newt, I agree 110%!!
I won't use a hub for anything any more. Like you said, old, Dumb, technology. A 100 Mb switch with routing capibuility is the only way to go.