What are these things?

[george41407]

Yesterday I went to the local dump to drop off some garbage. Sitting
next to the dumpster was a whole box of computer stuff. Most was just
old books, manuals, and printer/power/parallel cables. Of course much
of this is useful, so I just threw the whole box in my car. I was
just digging thru the box and discarding the useless paper stuff. On
the bottom of the box was a parallel cable switcher. That will help
my printer swapping. But there are 2 boxes that I am not sure just
what they are. They were connected together with a cord that looks
like a phone cord with larger plugs on the ends.

One says Westell DSL Modem, and has no switches, but has 4 lights on
the front that are labelled USB - ETHERNET - READY - POWER. I dont
have access to DSL in this rural area, but I am assuming this is the
modem that would be used if I had DSL access. It's lacking the black
plugin transformer that calls for 12V plug on rear. What I dont
understand is how this plugs in. I assume the USB cable is what is
used to get the signal into the computer, the one labelled LINE goes
to the phone jack. But then there's the ETHERNET connection, which
was connected to the other box, which is called D-Link Ethernet
Broadband Router. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? Yes, I know it's for a
network, but I have never setup a network, so what does this do, and
why does the DSL modem go to it, AND to the computer? This thing has
5 of those plugs that look like large ended phone cords. It also
lacks the power transformer labelled 5V 2A. Can this be used to
network several computers together? If so, what would the cables plug
into. My computers dont have any of those large ended phone cable
plugs...... It would be sort of nice to network my main computer
(Win98) and my test computer which has numerous operating systems
depending on which harddrive I put in it.

I think I went to the dump at the right time. I love boxes of stuff
like this, just wish I knew what this was all for. There are quite a
few USB cables, and those are surely useful and rather costly to buy.

Thanks

George

 

[SteveH]

Yesterday I went to the local dump to drop off some garbage. Sitting
next to the dumpster was a whole box of computer stuff. Most was just
old books, manuals, and printer/power/parallel cables. Of course much
of this is useful, so I just threw the whole box in my car. I was
just digging thru the box and discarding the useless paper stuff. On
the bottom of the box was a parallel cable switcher. That will help
my printer swapping. But there are 2 boxes that I am not sure just
what they are. They were connected together with a cord that looks
like a phone cord with larger plugs on the ends.

One says Westell DSL Modem, and has no switches, but has 4 lights on
the front that are labelled USB - ETHERNET - READY - POWER. I dont
have access to DSL in this rural area, but I am assuming this is the
modem that would be used if I had DSL access. It's lacking the black
plugin transformer that calls for 12V plug on rear. What I dont
understand is how this plugs in. I assume the USB cable is what is
used to get the signal into the computer, the one labelled LINE goes
to the phone jack. But then there's the ETHERNET connection, which
was connected to the other box, which is called D-Link Ethernet
Broadband Router. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? Yes, I know it's for a
network, but I have never setup a network, so what does this do, and
why does the DSL modem go to it, AND to the computer? This thing has
5 of those plugs that look like large ended phone cords. It also
lacks the power transformer labelled 5V 2A. Can this be used to
network several computers together? If so, what would the cables plug
into. My computers dont have any of those large ended phone cable
plugs...... It would be sort of nice to network my main computer
(Win98) and my test computer which has numerous operating systems
depending on which harddrive I put in it.

I think I went to the dump at the right time. I love boxes of stuff
like this, just wish I knew what this was all for. There are quite a
few USB cables, and those are surely useful and rather costly to buy.

Thanks

George

Why not Google for the model number on the router? It's bound to give you a
link to the DLink site and possibly a download link for the user manual for
it.

SteveH

 

[Patty]

One says Westell DSL Modem, and has no switches, but has 4 lights on
the front that are labelled USB - ETHERNET - READY - POWER. I dont
have access to DSL in this rural area, but I am assuming this is the
modem that would be used if I had DSL access. It's lacking the black
plugin transformer that calls for 12V plug on rear. What I dont
understand is how this plugs in. I assume the USB cable is what is
used to get the signal into the computer, the one labelled LINE goes
to the phone jack. But then there's the ETHERNET connection, which
was connected to the other box, which is called D-Link Ethernet
Broadband Router. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? Yes, I know it's for a
network, but I have never setup a network, so what does this do, and
why does the DSL modem go to it, AND to the computer? This thing has
5 of those plugs that look like large ended phone cords. It also
lacks the power transformer labelled 5V 2A. Can this be used to
network several computers together? If so, what would the cables plug
into. My computers dont have any of those large ended phone cable
plugs...... It would be sort of nice to network my main computer
(Win98) and my test computer which has numerous operating systems
depending on which harddrive I put in it.

I suspect that the Westell DSL Modem is just that. A DSL Modem for
connecting to DSL broadband. It would have a phone line that connected to
the phone jack on the wall if you had DSL.

The second device is a router. A router is used for a network connection
for connecting more than one computer to a broadband connection and also
connecting to each other (if you chose to network the computers together).
You need the router to connect more than one computer to the internet
connection modem whether it's DSL, Sattelite, or Cable. Your computers
need a NIC card which will give you the RJ-45 connector (looks like a
larger phone line connector). If your computers don't have those you can
usually buy them for less than $10. The back of the router should have one
WAN port (to connect to the internet) and more than likely 4 LAN ports (to
connect to each computer). The modem connects to the WAN port.

Take SteveH's suggestion and find the manual for the router. It will
explain a lot of things to you.

Patty

 

[ProfGene]

Yesterday I went to the local dump to drop off some garbage. Sitting
next to the dumpster was a whole box of computer stuff. Most was just
old books, manuals, and printer/power/parallel cables. Of course much
of this is useful, so I just threw the whole box in my car. I was
just digging thru the box and discarding the useless paper stuff. On
the bottom of the box was a parallel cable switcher. That will help
my printer swapping. But there are 2 boxes that I am not sure just
what they are. They were connected together with a cord that looks
like a phone cord with larger plugs on the ends.

One says Westell DSL Modem, and has no switches, but has 4 lights on
the front that are labelled USB - ETHERNET - READY - POWER. I dont
have access to DSL in this rural area, but I am assuming this is the
modem that would be used if I had DSL access. It's lacking the black
plugin transformer that calls for 12V plug on rear. What I dont
understand is how this plugs in. I assume the USB cable is what is
used to get the signal into the computer, the one labelled LINE goes
to the phone jack. But then there's the ETHERNET connection, which
was connected to the other box, which is called D-Link Ethernet
Broadband Router. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? Yes, I know it's for a
network, but I have never setup a network, so what does this do, and
why does the DSL modem go to it, AND to the computer? This thing has
5 of those plugs that look like large ended phone cords. It also
lacks the power transformer labelled 5V 2A. Can this be used to
network several computers together? If so, what would the cables plug
into. My computers dont have any of those large ended phone cable
plugs...... It would be sort of nice to network my main computer
(Win98) and my test computer which has numerous operating systems
depending on which harddrive I put in it.

I think I went to the dump at the right time. I love boxes of stuff
like this, just wish I knew what this was all for. There are quite a
few USB cables, and those are surely useful and rather costly to buy.

Thanks

George

The router box can be used to connect two or more computers to a DSL
connection and it can also be used to connect computers for file sharing
which you can do buy getting an RJ45 cable which are those cables that
look like telephone cables only bigger. You would have to connect the
computers to the router then setup file and print sharing protocol in
Control Panel under networking.