I love networking!

[trythil]

They all _require_ their own NIC. The only real situations in which you'd be using a machine with more than one NIC are

(1) setting up a gateway for other machines to go through if you wanted to add e.g. a firewall, or
(2) striping network devices for additional transfer speed.

[TokyoU15]

His comment on Dual NIC's confused the hell out of me.

[TokyoU15]

hhmm, that switcher really got my attention. It sounds nice NOT to share bandwidth. I went on a hunt for a "switcher" and found htis on tigerdirect:

[a href="http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... witcher</a>

It sounds good and from the description alone it sounds like what you were talking about trythil. I'll probably buy it and replace my hub and router. Unless I still need the router then I'll keep it. *continues to do research*

[TokyoU15]

arg

<a href="http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... witcher</a>

[trythil]

A network switch is not the same as a router. They don't even operate at the same layer of the OSI Model.

A switch simply switches packets on Layer 2 (i.e. MAC address) addresses. A router has the capability to go on Layer 3 (i.e. IP address) addresses and thus inter-network communication.

That is why you need that router.

[FurryCurry]

You'll still need your router to give all the machines access to the internet, if I'm correctly guessing how your network is set up.

You won't really see any benefit from a switch right now, unless you have all three machines tranferring massive files amongst each other at the same time.

Anyway, If you want to spend $30-40, I'd probably go for this.

[TokyoU15]

I only plan on transfering files from 2 computers but not simultanously. 1 at a time, and sometimes at the same time. But overall I'm just going to use my seconday machine add files I will use while editing. Sure it'll go a bit slower, but right now I really need the space. That and I'm the only person in the house that does major PC stuff. Hence the sharing network setup.

THanks for all the corrections/tips. I appreciate them.

[mckeed]

you can allwys benifit from a switch....especially if you are going to use it to store video sources you are going to edit from. His two NIC card thing is used to set up a computer as a router instead of buying a hardware box.....more expensive to run, but allows you lots mroe than a router aimed at a home market. You could allways get giabit ethernet cards for about 140 and get a gigabit switch for it....you can run that over std cat 5 cable. Yes netowrking is cool. But you won't get great performance editing over a network anyway......you are allways better off using local source unless you hit the gigabit ethernet level. That is what most SAN's run now a days anyway...some even run fiber channel.

[FurryCurry]

Last time I looked, while gigbit cards had achieved some sort of sane pricing structure, even an 8 port gigabit switch was insanely priced.

It still makes sense to do stuff like replacing <80gig drives, or buying a cheap full tower + big PSU to get more capacity and drive bays, AFAIK.

I'd love to be proved wrong, if someone wants to point me at a cheap, yet decent quality 8-16 port gigabit switch.

[mckeed]

depends on your definition of cheap.....you can get a 4 port gigabit switch from d-link for about 300....probally less if you shop around for it. That isn't that bad, but considering the amount of hard drive space you can buy for that much it doesn't looks that great.