home networking questions

[mich]

Hello,

I'm sorry for coming here with such general questions but I've been reading several sites and am a bit overwhelmed.. I thought posting my queries on a forum might help point me in the right direction.

My roommate and I would like to get some sort of broadband and would be sharing the internet connection between two desktops.. one with Windows 2000 Professional, one with Win98SE, and a laptop with WinXP Home Edition (though most of the time only two of the three will be in use at the same time).

So far I've gathered we're going to need either a DSL or cable modem.. router.. and enough cables to connect everything to the router. (any reccomendations on a good router and modem?) So far so good.. I think heh. I think I can figure out how to get that all connected I'll probably endup back here when it doesn't work ;)

One question I haven't been able to answer for myself yet is whether it would be best to get DSL or Cable. I know there are tons of factors in that so my main question is how does the internet connection being shared factor into that? I know with cable, the bandwidth is shared with the whole area so sharing it between the two of us shouldn't really affect the speeds we get. Does that mean that with DSL, if we have our own personal bandwidth, that we'd be sharing that bandwidth half and half? Or is it not that simple?

Thanks for your time.. any input or web sites I should read would be greatly appreciated.

[TEH WIN]

Welcome to Speedguide :)

The best way to share an internet connection is with a Cable/DSL router. There are two very popular routers.. the linksys 4 port router, and the netgear router. I have the linksys router, have had it for more than a year, and have never had a problem with it. I LOVE it. Very easy to configure for all my needs, including hosting an ftp, http, and quake3 server.

with the router, you just plug the comptuers in to the router and go.. its that simple.



now for your cable or dsl question. like you said, both services offer different advantages, but i believe that cable is just the best around... and there are more cable users than DSL users.

both cable and DSL lines are "capped" at a certian speed. meaning only a certian ammount of speed will go to all your comptuers at any given time. say you have a max download of 200k/s. if you have both comptuers on, and one comptuer you start downloading a huge file, it will go 200k/s because that is how much your line is allowing. the router does no spit it 50/50, but rather it simply hands out what is available to whichever comptuer wants it. this works the same for Cable and DSL.

i hope you understand what i am saying, any questions feel free to ask

Teh win

[mich]

Awesome! That was my hunch but I wasn't sure, thank you for clearing it up for me.