[Cube] Re: Cube] #$^%# PART TWO, ETHERNET, CUBE< CABLE BROADBAND PRINTER

[Joseph B. Gurman]

     Ceep wrote:

>2. Problem #2: CANT USE BROADBAND MODEM AND PRINTER AT SAME TIME
>part of the problem is that the Motorola Modem from the cable company that
>carries the broadband and the cable tv BOTH, fits into the same plug under the
>cube that the printer fits into. There is only one opening for this kind of
>sort of fat clip phonewire-like cord under the 
>cube, that either the cable modem
>and printer use. I can either have flawless braodband connection or run my
>printer, not both. I am a writer, and need internet open most times, and also
>need to print during day several times. The Apple printer has a special yellow
>cord (with fat clip phonewire-like end on it) that would normally run to cube
>cause the orginal cord end that came with the 16/600 Apple printer, didnt fit
>any of the openings under the cube.Ý

     Sounds like the printer is an Ethernet 
printer, and the Ethernet (RJ-45; that's the 
broader-than
-a-phone-jack-but-looks-like-one connector, the 
phone jack being called an RJ-11) port on the 
Cube is smart enough to make a connection with a 
single device whether or not the pairs in the 
cable cross over (a "crossover cable") or go 
straight through. The same is true of ports on 
most small Ethernet switches, so I suggest you 
look into buying one so you can do (as I, and 
many people with more than one Ethernet device, 
do) this:

Cable modem |-------| Ethernet 10/100 switch
                                             |                               |
                                             |                               |
                                       Printer                      Cube

     A good switch will provide (i) a firewall, to 
keep you safe from a broad spectrum of nastiness 
out there on the Net (and yes, some of it can 
affect Macs) and (ii) "Network Address 
Translation" (NAT) and/or DHCP, so your printer 
and Mac will have to take on new, Class C 
(non-routed) IP addresses (e.g. 
10.something.something.something or 
192.168.something.something), while your switch 
will pretend to have the hardware MAC address of 
your Cube, so your cable company/ISP is none the 
wiser (some have restrictions on the number of 
devices used on a home network hanging off a 
modem connection to their network, but in 
practice, they just don't want everyone's nodes 
taking up their IP namespace and broadcasting 
garbage packets over their network.

     I like the Asanté switches, e.g. the FR1004, 
which has routing (and firewall, NAT, and DHCP 
capabilities):

	http://www.asante.com/products/productsLvl3/FR1004.asp,

or if you think you can live without those, their FS5005 switch:

	http://www.asante.com/products/productsLvl3/FS5000_Series.asp .

     There are cheaper ones out there, but Asanté 
(at least until their recent purchase by 
TechnoConcepts; don't know if that's going to 
change) has always provided Mac-compatible 
firmware updates, and their Web-based router 
configuration works with Safari.

>i am a girl. I hope this note does not add to the veracity of the
>Harvard President's remark a few weeks ago that 
>perhaps most women are not built
>for science...i hope that if someone would teach me, I could learn. And
>remember.

     To be fair to Larry Summers, who doesn't 
deserve it considering the controversy-per-year 
he's stirred since arriving at Harvard, he 
apparently said one could interpret the bald data 
to say that, but that he would rather it weren't 
true. Please become a Cube geek and contribute 
frequently to this list to help amass 
contradictory data.

     For what it's worth (and my diploma from Mr. 
Summer's Eastern Massachusetts School of Mines 
says 1972, so it's geezerific at best), girls and 
young women often feel they have to get 
everything perfect, all the time, so they're 
frequently silent until they've checked and 
double-checked their facts, while men of all 
ages, the good Pres. Summers included, tend to, 
er, shoot from the hip..... not that you'd ever 
notice from this list. Uh-uh.

     If this behavioral thing is still true, it 
leads to the more insecure sort of guy being 
intimidated by women who always have their facts 
straight, their ducks in a row, and all their 
arguments backup up by reliable data. Sounds sort 
of like scientists, to me. So where Larry got 
that bizarre train of logic is beyond me.  There 
are lots of sociological and psychosocial reasons 
why women maybe underrepresented in the ranks of 
tenured science faculty. My understanding is that 
a bit over 50% of the computer science bachelors' 
degrees in the US now go to women.

     Sorry if this has strayed too far off-topic, 
but women should be able to hold up half the 
list. One handed.

						Joe Gurman