Network question - final version (disregard the others)

[Paul Maddox Mail LIsts]

Micke,

> Wouldn't that be alternative 2?

Yes.
As you essentially have two networks (yours and the big bad wide world web)
you can connect all your devices into one switch, and let the ADSL modem
(which is normally a router) talk to the world.

Hmmm, how to explain...
I know..

Imagine you have a room with a single door and on that door, is a guard.
In that room are all your mates,
You can chat to any of them directly.
Now, if you want to speak to someone outside the room, you pass the message
you want, to the guard.
He passes it onto where it's going, when he gets a reply, he passes it back
to you.

Now, any of your friends can also talk to the outside world, but again, they
*must* go through the guard.

If some drunken idiot tries to get in, he has to get past the guard first.


By using two switches (as shown in your option 1), you've got two rooms, one
with two doors (room a), and one with one door (room b)

If you're in room a, you can talk to the guard direct and then the outside
world.
If you're in room b, you have to talk to your mate by the door, who passes
the message to room a, and then to the guard, before it goes outside.

In theory this slows things down, BUT, given you're not going to sending
gigabytes of data all the time and need low latency you won't notice any
real difference. So either will work, I just like to keep stuff simple, even
if my explanations aren't.

Does that make sense?

Paul