I made this comment on some forum, for this question below, ad was told it was wrong....?
The Question *****
I have the parts for a new build PC on order and will be hopefully putting it together this weekend.
I need to be able to connect this to the internet somehow. It will be Vista 64bit. Apparently there are no Vista 64bit drivers for my Speedtouch USB Modem (It dates from 2002).
My query is, I already have a WinXP 32bit Pc with a broadband internet connection. Can I connect these two Pcs together using an Ethernet crossover cable, and could I access the internet on the new Pc via the old PC? If so how is it easy to do?
The New moBo is an Asus P6T Delux and the old one is a Gigabyte GA-K8NSUltra939. They both have LAN ports, or course.
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My answer *********
You dont actually buy a stand alone router, it usually a 3-in-1 product, a router/switch/modem. Although a stand alone router should have 2 ethernet ports anyway so you would be fine there for 2 PCs, but the ethernet/usb ports you see on a home %26quot;router%26quot; are acually the switch ports within the device.
Straight through cables from router(switch really) to your pc then just plug the other PC in the router and thats it.
The DHCP server will assign both PCs a LAN ip like 192.168.1.1 etc... and your router will be assigned an internet ip from your ISP and you are good to go.
The only option security wise in the routers settings that you may want to change is the DMZ setting, un-enabling it closes all the ports which would mean you would have to manually forward any ports you wanted to use, hence DMZ is bascially a firewall.
As for sharing files between PCs you have to run the netwrok setup wizard on both PCs and then all you need is that both PCs are on the samer workgroup which they will be after the wizard.
to see what your workgroup is, right click mycomputer/properties/computer name/change then make sure the workgroup name there is the same on both PC%26#039;s
*********|||1 you can by a stand alone router. Consider the WiFi router 4 ports and 1 ethernet connection for the modem. 4 device ports. The addresses are assigned by the router for the devices on the local net. Below is a link to a router picked at random. The method you are discussing is dated at best. The file sharing method you discussed is also dated. Dropping any file in a public folder will share it out.
