Router Question

[Tyler Hall]

Greetings;

I have a question about a router.  I'm looking to buy one for our work
connection, but is a little worried.   Right now We have 5 ips, 4 of them
are used for the higher end employees (president, vice president, etc) and
the other 5 computers are on fake ips.  I'm running Redhat doing
masquerating to masqerade those other 5 computers, but I play around with it
a lot so it's not the most stable thing on this planet.  So I thought to
myself, Hey I'll just go buy a d-link router for $85.   But, I'm running
into these problems.    It has 2 ports, a remote port and a local port.   Do
I need both of them plugged in?  It says, put the modem in the local port (i
believe) and plug the other thing into the hub.

Well...      right now, the modem is going straight to the uplink of the
hub, and then everyone uses it from there.    It also says, that you can
plug one end into the hub and one end into the computer?  I could do that,
but then does that mean the computer has to be on 24/7 for the router to
work?  That wouldnt solve my problem, I want a 24/7 deciated connection!

So, I'm thinking.    Could I take both remote and local ports, and plug them
both into the hub?  Or does one have to be to the  modem?

If I have to plug one into the modem, and one into the hub, will it affect
the real ips at all?   Like, if the router is down, it's going to stop the
flow of the connection to the hub, eh?   Also, if I make some routing rules
on the router, is it going to use those routing rules on the real ips as
well?  Even though the real ips dont use the router gateway, they use the
modem gateway?   I'm stuck folks, I've looked over the net and can't find
crap.  So, I came to plug! :>

-
Tyler Hall
http://www.nerdie.org