The network shown in the figure is an upgrade to our earlier home network that was implemented without a router. In addition to the router, we have also upgraded to a network printer with an ethernet interface and a wireless network to serve a laptop.
There are certain advantages to this approach over our earlier network approach:
The router is a Linksys BEFSR81 which provides 8 ports. The hub that was used in the earlier network is temporarily retired. It can be used to extend the router to 15 ports if needed in the future.
The default IP address for the router is 192.168.1.1 so I changed my client machines to the 192.168.1.x private network IP addresses from the 10.2.1.x family of addresses that I was using earlier.
Configuring the router is done by accessing the router using a browser at address http://192.168.1.1. Configuring for ATT Broadband (nee Mediaone) required only two steps:
The second step is done so that Mediaone sees the same NIC MAC address as before. Or you could skip this step and call your cable provider and give them the MAC address of the router and they will reprovision your service for that ID. The router manual is not clear on how to do this. Select Advanced>MAC Address Clone from the home page to set the MAC address.
Since I host my homepage on the Client 1 machine, I also configured IP address 192.168.1.2 as a DMZ (demilitarized zone) which bypasses the router firewall and provides outside access directly to this machine.
The Wireless Access Point is a Linksys WAP11. I chose to get an access poing separate from the router to have the flexibility in locating the access point away from the router in case that is necessary to get better wireless coverage all around the house. Otherwise a four-port router with the wireless access point built in is a less expensive configuration. Using the default access point IP address of 192.168.1.250 requires no configuration of the access point. Otherwise, one must use a windows configuration program on the laptop to change the configuration. The wireless network PC card for the laptop is a Linksys WPC11.
The printer is a HP 4100DTN, which does two-sided printing as well as providing a network interface. This is a little overkill compared to the HP 2100 series printer. Finally, one could also have another printer attached to one of the clients (e.g. a color dot-matrix printer) and access this from all clients via the LPR command, but this requires that the machine to which that printer is attached must be on-line to print.