It's a Linksys 4-port DSL hub that I decided to get after reading a review on Ars Technica. It's basically a 4-port ethernet hub that knows how to split up an internet connection among all of the machines connected to it. Since my DSL box knows DHCP, things were as simple as could be. I just hooked up the hub to the DSL box, set everything to use DHCP, and everything set itself up automatically.
Price is really good, about $140. Considering that you'd probably pay about that much for an ordinary hub and some connection multiplexing software, it's just easier to get a box.
It's also nice that since the internet's no longer piping through Shelly's AutoCAD machine, Shelly doesn't have to apologize when she reboots her computer :)
We're hard at work setting up the garage as Shelly's new office. We're gonna keep the DSL connection and the fancy new DSL-box in the original office (my office). In Shelly's new garage office, we're putting up a Linksys 4-port print server, which is similar to the DSL box, but you can hook up printers to it. If all goes well, we should have the whole house internet-ed and have a nice little print-server to boot.
It's funny. We held on to the old Packard Bell box to use as our internet hub and print server. These little gizmos pretty-much take its place.
Nice stuff. They've also got a 20 Gig hard drive that hooks up to the system. Pretty cool.
On another note entirely, the guy who was behind the kidnapping/murder of Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her family just got life without paroll. I find it interesting that such a high profile case has gotten no press at all.
