[pdurrant]

I'd suggest getting an eight (or sixteen) port switch, connect that to your router, and then connect all your other equipment to the switch.

With a switch, traffic between two machines on the switch doesn't interfere with traffic between any other machines on the switch. Each machine only sees traffic intended for that machine.

How about something like

http://www.dabs.com/products/netgear...98-41770000-11

Using one port for connection to the router, that'll give you seven free ports.

And yes, all the devices will see the DHCP server on the router as normal - it's transparent to that sort of traffic.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Can someone assist me with a home networking question, please?

At present, I have an ADSL router with 4 wired ports + wireless. I do quite a lot of large file transfers between machines, so need to have a wired network for performance reasons. My main PCs are currently connected to the wired ethernet ports of the router.

I've now run out of ports on the router, and want to add a new device.

Can I just buy an 8-port hub, connect one of its ports to a wired port on the router, and plug my additional devices onto the additional ports on the hub? If I do that, will all devices continue to "see" the router as a DHCP server, and use it for internet access? Would I use one of the "normal" ports on the hub to connect to the router, or would I use the special "upstream" port on the hub for that purpose?

Thanks for any assistance with this - I'm a bit hazy about how to wire it all up!