Quick network question

Yes.

That set up should accomplish what you want to do, unless your switch requires a crossover cable instead of a standard cable (but then just replace the crossover cable with the standard cable).

Then you have to make sure that the sharing and network settings are correct on your systems to enable them to share and see each other (you probably already know this, but added it in there as certain OS variants have issues with networking, i.e. Windows Home editions and some Premium versions as they lack the full networking apps)

radiogoober said:

Hi all,

Quick network question:

Let's say I need to hardwire 10 devices and I want them all on the same network. I'm using an airport extreme base station. Can I use one of the three available ports and run a standard network cable between the airport extreme and a normal hub, and then plug my 10 devices into the switch? And this would allow every computer to see each other?

Thank you

Click to expand...

Yes. You can add switches and hubs (up to a reasonable limit) and every computer can "see" every other computer. They should get an ip address from the AEBS when they are plugged in (or connect wirelessly). The only ports you need to worry about not mixing up are the WAN and LAN ports on the AEBS. You should connect the WAN port to the internet (cable modem or DSL modem) and the rest are all "behind the firewall" and are equal. However, If you aren't using your AEBS as a router, I don't think you can treat the WAN port as if it was just another local network port but hubs and switches are so cheap it's not really worth thinking about what to do with those few LAN ports on the AEBS. BTW, switches are better than hubs. I suggest you go with gigabit switches. It makes little difference for internet usage but if you are ever copying a few gig of files between machines on your network, you'll be glad you went with gigabit instead of anything slower.