TL> mark lewis wrote in a message to Bob Ackley:

 BA> Some are towers...

 ml> not to mention that any of them can easily be placed on the floor
 ml> on a shelf somewhere... i've had three or four holding up a
 ml> workbench in the past... those heavy tall towers make excellent
 ml> "legs" in many situations ;) 

 TL> Ho Ho......well, let's see, that might work....but how would I
 TL> connect to my desktop, which has all the internet connectivity with
 TL> DOS?  I am not gonna invest in another phone line.

what's wrong with a simple network switch? 8-port 10/100 switches are
cheap, these days... less then $20US... no, not a router... a switch...

but then the question comes of how is your current connection handled???
DSL or Cable? is the modem connected to a router/firewall or directly to
your desktop machine?

generally, you want something like this...

            internet
               |          (your WAN IP is on this side)
         router/firewall
               |          (all addresses on the inside)
     ---------------------(are RFC1918 pvt addresses  )
     |     |      |      |
   wks1  wks2    wks3   wks4


in some cases, one needs a switch after the router/firewall to feed
multiple workstations... this depends on the number of ports the router
has...

my personal setup is more extensive... my router/firewall is not a
store-bought COTS router/firewall box but a complete dedicated computer
running the OSS Smoothwall Express3 firewall system... it affords me a
whole lot more control and protection capabilities than any of those COTS
router boxes... (Athlon 700mhz, 512M RAM, 13Gig HD, four 10/100 NICs)

one NIC is connected to the DSL modem... this is the RED network... RED for
"danger"...

one NIC is connected to a switch for the ORANGE network... ORANGE for
"possible danger"... i run my internet facing servers from
ORANGE...

one NIC is connected to a switch for the PURPLE network... PURPLE for
"possible bad"... unknown machines go on this network... guests
with simple internet access needs and the like... i also have an open wifi
here...

one NIC is connected to a switch for the GREEN network... GREEN for
"good"... the GREEN is my network... TBH, my GREEN has two
switches daisy-chained together... one switch for my machines at my end of
the house and the other switch for my dad's machines at his end of the
house and the network printer...


                    internet
                       |
                    DSLModem
                       |
                       | red
                       |
    green   ----------SW3----------   orange 
            |          |          |
        /switch/    /switch/   /switch/
            |          |          |
 ------------          | p        ------------
 |   |   |  |          | u           |   |   |
wk1 wk2 wk3 |          | r          wk1 wk2 wk3
            |          | p
        /switch/       | l
            |          | e
 ------------     -----------
 |   |   |        |    |    |
wk4 wk5 wk6      wk1  wk2  wifi


many folk easily operate with a RED/GREEN setup but i wanted to split my
servers off to a separate network for added protection in case a server got
infiltrated... when folk want me to work on their workstations, those go on
PURPLE so as to not possibly infect my servers or internal workstations
with something nefarious...

oops... sorry for rambling and carrying on... just sharing my setup and why
i use what i use in the manner that i have...

in any case, internal machines would be using RFC1918 private addresses and
the only machine visible to the outside would be the SWE3 box or the COTS
router box... if you have servers internally that need to be accessed from
outside, you use port forwarding... with the internal machines being in the
same RFC1918 address space, they can connet to each other and network over
the wire instead of using the sneakers (al la sneaker net) ;)

HTH somehow...

)\/(ark