linksys

[Edgar Allen]

Forwarded message:
>
>The amature radio organization has a loose-knit program where the more
>experienced members volunteer to help the newer people when they have
>questions.  Not everyone is required to be a mentor or even an expert.  Those
>that do mentor find it to be tremondously rewarding and those that don't wish
>to mentor don't bag on anyone for asking for a little guidance.  
>
Howdy Elmer!

For the original poster:

Another poster has already mentioned connecting the Linksys to the
cablemodem.  It will masquerade connections from all four ports of the
switch so that they appear as a single address to everything outside of
your house.

The Linksys has four "internal" ports which you can attach to and one
"outside" or Internet port.  The software inside the Linksys going from
inside to outside so that they appear to come from the Linksys itself.

The returning connections are recognized, tranformed from the Linksys address
to the 192.168.1.? address used by your originating PC and sent to your
port of the four port switch.

This tranformation of outgoing and incoming packets is referred to as
masquerading because your internal 192.168.1.? adresses appear as only
the Linksys outside address.

The Linksys itself is set up with a web browser.  Just type in on the 
location bar:  http://192.168.1.1/ which is, I seem to recall, the default
address of the Linksys itself.

You will probably not need to do anything to the Linksys configuration.
I believe it uses DHCP addresses on the hub ports by default.

All of your internal machines should point to 192.168.1.1, or whatever
the Linksys uses as its internal address, for their default gateway and
your ISP nameserver for DNS resolution.