Hi everyone,

I tried posting this in the Mac forum but no-one seems to have any answers for me. If anyone here can help I'd be really grateful, I'm struggling a bit!

I have a PowerMac 7300 (dual boot Yellow Dog Linux, Mac OS 9), Powerbook 3400 (Mac OS 9 only), an old 10 base ethernet hub and an old Cisco 2600 router.

I'm going to be getting a cable broadband connection soon and I want to check that I have the equipment to be able to use the router as a hardward firewall and make my own little LAN. I have no experience of doing this before.

How do you set up a router to work with a specific machine? Is it better to configure the router through linux or Mac OS 9? What are the pitfals of using a router?

Thanks,

Jimbo

I am not familiar with the Cisco router that you have, but have used a linksys router and it was very easy to set up. It uses a browser to administer the router and you could do this in either OS. DHCP will do the rest for you (ie assigning IP addresses to as many computers as you wish to attach). If you are going the wired route, these are relatively inexpensive, usually 40-50 dollars. Get the new router and save yourself some headaches, it will replace both your cisco router and hub. I use mine for a linux, mac os9 and osx, BeOs, and windoze 2k machines. Good Luck.