Hey, question.

[conuly]

I'm pretty sure this isn't possible, but the less I have to buy, the better.

Is it at all possible to have one computer hooked up directly to the modem, and the other hooked up through the router?

Edit: All right, all right, all right. Unless you can guarantee me a new modem if it blows up the old one, I'm forgetting this insane idea.

Comments

[griphus.livejournal.com]

wow, that's a pretty shitty feature (also explains why hubs aren't sold anymore in major outlets). Now you've got me all thinking as to how to bypass that (probably something involving spoofing the MAC address of the other computer on the network to all read as the same...maybe tricking the modem into thinking it's been cycled every time it gets an outgoing signal from a card with a different MAC?)

Sadly, I wasn't actually referring to a hub, just a small jack...until my roommate kindly informed me that that won't distribute IP addresses and just cause bizarre collisions. Apparently all that the splitters are good for is monitoring traffic.

...but yeah, you bring up a rather good point. checking company policy is best before going ahead and purchasing a router. Although the cable line that I have here (upstate NY) doesn't mind routers...although my use policy states that i can't have any servers running. Yeah, my ass.

[zathras26.livejournal.com]

I thought of MAC spoofing, too, but I don't think that would do any good -- I've never tried it, so I don't know for sure, but I suspect that would involve unresolvable addressing problems, much like the ones you get when you assign the same IP to more than one computer on a network.

As to tricking the modem into thinking it's been cycled, I don't know. It would probably depend on how accessible the modem's firmware is and whether you'd be able to write a script/app that would be able to do that. Whether that's possible or not, that -- and spoofing, for that matter -- are probably more trouble than they're worth. If routers cost $10,000 or something, some kind of "trick" might be worth the work, but routers are cheap. I use a D-Link 614+, which is a B router with four Ethernet ports, and you can get one of those on eBay for less than ten dollars. So the kind of monkeying around that we're speculating about here just doesn't seem worth the effort.

Your roommate is right about the jacks (and hubs, for that matter). They work strictly on Layer 1 and don't provide the kind of functionality you'd need to share a connection.

[griphus.livejournal.com]

yeah, this is all stuff i have barely touched since compulsory CCNA classes three or four years back...hubs are only on Layer 1? I thought they distributed IP addresses (I didn't say I paid much attention at said classes ;) )

re: the monkeying, yeah, that'd only be worth it for shits and giggles. in a i-fought-big-broadband-and-won way.

[zathras26.livejournal.com]

Nope, hubs are layer 1 devices. They don't do shit. :-) That's one of the reasons that hubs aren't used much anymore... switches do all the same stuff that hubs do, except that they work at layer 2, which eliminates all the collisions you get with hubs and makes your network more efficient.