Making a home network

[Xiahou]

Since there seems to be anti-switch sentiment, I've edited my original reply to a more conventional broadband router. Still nice and cheap.

But it's still a switch on the lan-side.... no getting away from it.

Honestly, I cant think of a good reason not to go with a hardware solution for Internet sharing. Using ICS to make an XP workstation available to the Internet is just frightening to me....

I suppose there are some good Linux solutions, but why bother? You can spend just a few bucks and get a reliable device that's virtually plug&play.

[caravel]

The switch in itself is not the issue, routers have inbuilt switches, it's just that with a basic switch you'll need to set up a workstation as your router and if that's a windows firewall/ics based setup, then it get's risky, security wise. When it comes down to just two pc's connected via a usb modem, or a cable modem connected via a second ethernet port, the switch is completely redundant anyway as no switching will occur (in this case only crossover cable is needed).