Router and network question (linksys)

Cyber13

I am completely new to cable modems, routers and networking. I had no idea how to set up connection sharing or network, every thing i tried failed so I call Linksys and talked to some guy I could barely understand. Anyhow he had me force my lan connection on my second computer (10 half duplex) which is a NF7-S version 2. Now they share the connection but is this an optimal setting? He also said I should buy 10/100 cards as onboard lan is bad and can cause premature motherboard failure. I still do not have a network up. Should I use windows networking wizard or is there a better way? Is there a webpage that has all the answers for newbies or can you all help me out?

kryyst

It could be that your onboard Network card is having problems negotiating at 100 which is why he told you to set it to base 10. However 100 is better then 10 as it's 10 times faster. But that speed increase will only be noticeable if you are transfering files back and forth between the two computers. If you are only using the router to get internet to either computer then having them run at base 10 won't give you any noticeable speed difference from base 100 because your modem is only connected to your router at base 10.

As to burning out your mobo that's just his theory and isn't really true exactly. In fact onboard lan cards are often a faster interface then an add-on network card because they aren't connecting through the slower PCI bus. They do however take up a few more system resources.

About the only pseudo truth in his answer is that the more onboard stuff you have the more likely something is to fail in which case you have to replace your motherboard. Now when I say more likely I only mean that because if you have say 3 onboard systems as opposed to 1 (video, sound and lan) the odds increase that something may stop working. However the practical truth is you don't have to worry about it.

Basically in the end they guy is full of shit and is just reading the script that's comming up on his monitor and nothing more. It's the safe answers to give someone to get the job done. You should be able to connect to your rounter at base 100 without any problems. If you can't though there could be something wrong with your onboard lan and getting a PCI lan card *may* fix it.

But if I were you the first thing I would check is the cables you are using. Make sure they are Cat 5e and not just Cat 5 as Cat 5 is not designed to run at base 100 speeds.

To check the cable first look on the printing on the cable (if any) it usually will say cat 5 or cat 5e on it. If not you'll have to look at the coloured wires going into the connector. You'll have brown, Blue, Green, Orange plus 4 white ones each with a corrosponding coloured stripe.

If the wires go across brown, white/br, Green, white/gr, blue, white/bl, Orange white/or that it's a cat 5 cable.

If they go brown, white/br, Green, white/bl, Blue, white/gr, Orange, white/or then it's cat 5e.

Hope that helps.