Is It Safe To Hook Up A Hub With A Router?

[james_bond_rulez]

Originally posted by balamm@13 September 2003 - 11:22
On that router and hub, I checked into this one time before and was told that it should be cat5 to the device and then rj45 to the modem. That plus the fact that wireless is generally not rated as high as wired might be the reason for the slow net.

could you be a little more specific?

cat5 from modem to router then rj45 to computers?

a little confused

[balamm]

No, Cat5 from the computer(adapter) to the modem. Then rj45 from the modem to the router. I don't know why exactly but this was the cofiguration I found at linksys and a few other sites when I was looking into linksys problems.

[Livy]

also try upgrading your routers firmware, or look at the updates se ewht they changed, and also make sure your router has a registered mac address.

isnt rj45 and cat5 the same thing really, as cat5 refers to the cable type, and rj45 are the plugs?

[lynx]

If you give your router the same mac address as the netword card in your pc, things are going to get very confused, with messages apparently from/to one source/destination while in fact there are two. If these devices are on the network at the same time, you can certainly expect big problems.

@balamm: I understood what you meant about changing mac addresses to force a new ip address, but I was talking about concurrent use of ip addresses, not concurrent assignment of them. Some isp's know that you can only get so much down the line so they don't really care how many devices you connect up at your side of the modem, others say they have provided a line for connection of 1 pc only. Personally I think the latter are very short sighted, I would never accept a contract like that so they would never get my business, but even so there are ways round it.

[balamm]

I do use 5 - 10 IP's simultaneously though. I have god only knows how many virtual machines plus my server with 3 or more active IP's, and several other PC's plus whatever I'm servicing at the time. Not a thing they can do about it. They have a major surplus of IP's anyway. Their only concern has been when I uploaded 90 gig one month lol

@Livy, The rj45 is a crossover cable and the cat5 is not as I understand it. The rj45 is needed to network printers and such.

[Livy]

im sure the cat5 refers to the type of cable used, e.g cat5e cat6 etc, and rj-45 is the plugs, like rj-11, modem plugs,
a crossover cable can be made from a patch cable, so they will be the same wire.
http://yoda.uvi.edu/InfoTech/rj45.htm

[balamm]

I think you may be right but the connections in the connector module sometimes need to be crossed according to this from the linksys site. I couldn't find the networked printer article I went on before but there's a brief mention of it here for use with hub to hub connections.

Maybe it was strictly a lan thing.

PC-to-Hub connections. When connecting a PC to a hub, make sure that your RJ-45 cabling is straight-through. Pins 1, 2, 3, and 6 at the PC should line up pin-for-pin at the hub. And if the cabling is used with Fast Ethernet network segment, make sure it is Category 5 for best results. For more information about cabling, see our cabling guide.
Hub-to-Hub connections. When connecting two hubs together with RJ-45 cabling, be sure that the cabling is crossed over (if neither hub has an Uplink Port that can be utilized). Pins 1, 2, 3 and 6 at hub "A" should line up with pins 3, 6, 1, and 2 at hub "B", respectively. For more information about cabling, see our cabling guide.
10Mb Hub VS. 100Mb Hub. A 10Mb hub can't communicate with a 100Mb hub unless a switch or auto-sensing hub is used to translate the packets between the two speeds. Linksys Switches and Auto-Sensing hubs allow 10Mb and 100Mb to communicate with each other.

[Livy]

yeah, i knew abou the dif pins for crossovers.

http://www.linksys.com/tech_helper/cabling.html

[Somebody1234]

Cat5 cable is the cable rating. I can be crossover or straight. RJ-45 is those clear plastic plugs at the end of the cables.

The phone line connects to the modem, the modem connects to the router then each computer is connected to the router.

If your router has an 'uplink' socket then you can plug in a hub there but only do this if you need to connect more computers than your router allows directly (most allow 4).

Now, for the IP and DHCP. The router acts like a computer. When you connect it to the modem you have an external IP. All the internal network computers get IPs assigned to them from the router via DHCP. Your ISP doesn't see those intenal IPs. So in effect you don't need 2 IP from your ISP.

[james_bond_rulez]

Originally posted by Somebody1234@13 September 2003 - 14:28
Cat5 cable is the cable rating. I can be crossover or straight. RJ-45 is those clear plastic plugs at the end of the cables.

The phone line connects to the modem, the modem connects to the router then each computer is connected to the router.

If your router has an 'uplink' socket then you can plug in a hub there but only do this if you need to connect more computers than your router allows directly (most allow 4).

Now, for the IP and DHCP. The router acts like a computer. When you connect it to the modem you have an external IP. All the internal network computers get IPs assigned to them from the router via DHCP. Your ISP doesn't see those intenal IPs. So in effect you don't need 2 IP from your ISP.

mmm interesting.

now reguarding the cable issue. I find that the cable coming out of my modem connecting to my hub or my router is a cat5 cable (the one with a lot of metal strips in plastic casing), but my computers connect to hub/router with the one with 4 metal strips casing.

how does this affect my network I have no idea. but i guess the cat5 cable is faster because it has more metal strips in the cable?