Networking Issues for a Newbie

Hello,

I'm in a building that supplies the internet through wall jacks and we connect to the internet through those. there are three people in the room and a printer hooked up to the network. we only have four internet jacks, soon a fourth person will be starting. my question is how to I add an additional jack or connection and still have the printer work on the network?

I bought a wireless router (Netgear WGR614) but that puts the printer on a different network than the other three computers.

Is there something I can buy to expand the network from four to five connections? or is there a solution to have the printer hook up to the network on the router and have the other cpus outside of the network be able to access it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, i'm really new to networking (going waaaay outside of my job description here). whatever is the most simple solution I'll do.

Thanks,

Mike

 

Hi, welcome to the boards.

First, I'm going to assume you have no network administrator. For the sanity of all of your users, please DISCONNECT THE ROUTER. You have the potential to take out the internet for all the users intermittently with it.

All you need is a simple network switch. Any $15 5-port 10/100 switch will do unless you have gigabit speeds on your network. You will need a few extra network cables. Connect one wall outlet to one switch port and then connect additional devices to the remaining ports on the switch. (printer, additional computer, etc.) You can connect one additional device or up to 4 with the switch. They will all be in the same network IP range as everything connected directly to the wall.

 

Thanks so much. I tried the switch yesterday and no internet connection worked but now it is working... odd.

 

Depending on the model, some switches have a slightly separated uplink port and an uplink button. I had that problem with an older netgear switch and the uplink button.

The newest switches have auto-sensing for uplink and speed so that isn't an issue and that's why I didn't point it out as something to watch for.