[RESOLVED] Hardware & Software Firewalls

[jmwills]

Okay, I think I understand your issue. All you need to know is the IP Address of that first router. Your second router will look to the first one to be the "gateway" and will issue DHCP addressing to the four machines.
Just make sure you enable all the security features on the second router becasue it is going to be exposed to the entire world without good security.

[terryZ]

When you say "gateway", what do you mean? If there is no firewall on that first router, can I assume that the address of that router is the same both in and out? So that the second router DOES NOT realize that it's not directly connected to the net? I bought the second router to have that firewall protection. I'll also have software firewalls on all four computers.

Sorry to sound so dense but this IS the first time I'm ever doing this.

[10ECsoon]

Don't worry about sounding "dense", the phone companies (especially XO - I cannot stand them) don't do anything to help the end customer. All they care about it selling the circuit.
It's very likely that the first "router", the one supplied by XO, will simply route an "Internet" ip address, meaning not one in the 192.168.x.x range. This is typical. Most non-techies associate the word "router" with these home networking Cable/DSL routers you can buy at CompUSA or any local computer shop. But a telco's router is quite different. In your case it's acting more like a DSL/Cable modem but on a little higher level. Your Netgear "router" is required for NAT and DHCP in your internal network.

[jmwills]

Good explanation, although the first can also be a router ib some cases. The first device (let's gets simple) will just supply an IP Address from which your router will translate DHCP, but your router is still open to the internet so change all the default setups with regrads to password and lock it down.
Your manula will have documentaion on this. If it is a Netgear router, the internal address will be 192.168.0.1 with a user name of admin and password of "password". chnage bother of those values to something else.

[terryZ]

Thanks. You've all made this a bit more clear to me.

And you're right, 10ECsoon, the vendor really don't seem to care about anything except the sale. I won't go into the "sign this week" pressure that would have given us the first 3 months at half price - an offer that somehow evaporated after we signed because the company had rescinded the offer but "neglected to tell the sales staff". Since they won't do the actual connection to our internal phone system, they're "recommending" third parties that, of course, want to charge us an arm and a leg. They've "recommended" a third party to connect the T1 to our intranet, but I was pretty sure I could do this ... what with my history of setting up ICS on four previous Win98 machines and now with four XP HOME machines ... and this wonderful forum with it's knowledgable members (shameless flattery, I know)!

Now to try to figure out if I want DHCP or not on this intranet with 4 wired machines. I think not but I'm open to suggestions.