Your LAN is probably running at 10 or 100 Mbps.  Your cable modem service
is unlikely to go above 1 Mbps.  The router is not the bottleneck.

  A "4-port router" like this actually incorporates a router and a 4-port
switch into a single box.  If you want to add a firewall and/or a caching
proxy, the ideal place to add them is between the router and the switch, or
between the router and the cable modem.

  If you add a 1GHz machine in this kind of role, it will be terribly under-
utilized.  There will be a strong temptation to use this machine for other
things as well, which will both (a) compromise its security role, and (b)
possibly negatively affect the bandwidth available to machines which use it
as their gateway.

David Gillett


On 10 Sep 2003, at 5:55, Byron Wolter wrote:

> Currently I use a cable modem attached to a router that serves 4 computers
> (yes, I have that many teens). My son wants me to set up a 1Ghz computer
> that would serve as a gateway to improve the Internet connection speed.  Its
> sole purpose is only to be this gateway.  Can anyone explain to me exactly
> how this works and how I would set this up?  Also, is it worth the bother.
> Parts is no problem.
>
> Two computers use XP Home and the other two use Windows 98.
>
> Byron Wolter
>
>                          PCBUILD's List Owners:
>                       Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
>                        Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>

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