Networking Question...

[wnied]

I want to use one of those Linksys cable routers/switches on my cable modem and hook 4 workstations to it for gaming on the Internet. Is it better (for Ping reasons) to just use a 10/100 hub with the four workstations with seperate IPs from the cable company, or use one of the Linksys routers with the 4 workstations, with the router/switch connected directly to the cable modem?

Want to make a gaming LAN here at my new condo, I'm a hardcore gamer on TFC..must have a DAILY fix of
TFC, so ping means everything.

Anyone?
wnied

 

[CBuxton]

I haven't had directly applied experience here, BUT in any network if you are able to bypass any extra "connections" between points you are going to decrease your ping times, so by that theory it would be much better to get 4 IPs from your ISP, run your cable modem into a nice SWITCH (no hubs) and then each computer would be able to directly access the internet without having to go through the router.

 

[R0b0tN1k]

You don't need to worry about the latency in your local network. The latency between you and your ISP and everything after that will affect you the most.

 

[MrChicken]

If you have the extra money and really want to game on all 4 pc's, get the extra IP's from the provider and skip the router.
Otherwise you'll be in port mapping hell trying to get 4 pc's gaming over the internet through the router at the same time. Especially if it's the same game. More games are becoming NAT aware, but not all of them are and most will only let you have 1 game per IP address.
If you just want one pc to game off of the internet, then the router is cool. Or if you are only going to game inside the router on more than one pc, the router is cool there to.

 

[Wik]

4 seperate IPs will not increase your ping at all as they are all still coming in on the same line and one modem. It is a matter of choice I guess and depends on the games you want to play but my friends and I play UT and HL just fine on 2 - 4 systems sharing one cable IP and using a Freesco box.

 

[wnied]

The whole Idea is to keep the ping as low as possible for obvious reasons, which is why I thought the 4 seperate IPs on a switch would be best. As a few of my friends like to play sniper on HL. So with the 4 seperate IPs, on 4 seperate nodes, would cause the least amount of "back traffic" on the cable line coming into the house....Am i wrong to think this?

wnied