09-03-2011, 02:26 AM
davec wrote:
If I used a modem would I be able to: DSL Modem-->>Netgear ethernet switch-->> AirPort Base Station? Any conflicts from that kind of connection?
That would be right if the DSL modem has a router in it as your current one does. if you got one which did not have a router you could use the ABS as the router, but that would mean connecting the Netgear switch to the ABS.
Note that DSL modems provided by your internet provider come set up to connect to that provider. If you got a different DSL modem you would might have to set it up for the PPPoE connection to your internet provider. Think of DSL as giving you a dial tone and PPPoE as dialing the number which gives you an internet connection. (Our DSL modem has both "DSL" and "Internet" lights for the two functions.) If you do a Google search you should be able to find setup instructions for pretty much any DSL modem.
You can also set up a router to do the PPPoE part of the connection if you disable it on the DSL modem. We did this at one point several years ago with a DSL modem that could not reliably handle the PPPoE connection. Earthlink later replaced that modem with one which also has a router in it, so we no longer use a separate router.
The main issue will be if you do have an internet outage, Frontier may try to blame it on your modem instead of their system. But as pretty much all the modems have lights that show their status, as well as web interfaces that can do the same, you should be able to troubleshoot.
Good luck.
- Winston