2 routers? Help! :(?

I am planning to build a LAN Server for our office, Currently we have the Hurricane 9300G Wireless Router ( http://www.prolink2u.com/self/produc...e... ) provided by our internet service provider, While i am looking around the office i have seen this D-Link EBR-2310 ( http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=478 ) . I am planning to maximize what we have here and use it as well, but i am wondering how will i be able to use this? it has 5 ports compared to the prolinks 4 ports. It is not wireless though ( D-link ) Is that what people calls a switch? We plan to host websites from our computer server in the internet in the future, we plan to share files and printer as well. Thanks!

Thats actually a couple of difficult questions.

A switch is an intelligent device that identifies a sender and destination based on a hardware PROM burned address known as a MAC address. As this device works with hardware addresses directly it can only facilitate communication with directly connected devices and then only on a uniform medium. This device was created as a replacement to the old hub technology which made no attempt to identify any information and simply repeated all messages it was sent to anyone connected (greatly slowing a LAN).

A router is another intelligent device that identifies message sender and recievers by a logical address known as an IP address. As this is a logical address and not physical a router can facilitate communication with devices NOT directly connected to it and as such can relay across multiple devices to arrive at its destination (thus the internet was born ;-))

Most modern cheap routers are in fact router / switches and thus have the multiple LAN ports in the back. So answer to question one is they are both switches and they are both routers.

The problem with what you are proposing to do resides with the IP addressing system and how it works. A DNS (Domain Naming System) takes a friendly name like "www.yahoo.com" and through a list of IP addresses returns the first match it finds. As every device on the internet must have a unique IP address both routers also will have alternate IP addresses meaning all requesting traffic will be diverted to only one of your configured routers. There is an additional technology used to overcome this know as Load-Balancing however these require that the router support this technology and generally that the routers be of the same brand (or at least compatible).

Alternatively you could buy your second line for the telco, set up the second router and have all the computers in the office set to use one router to access the internet and the other router solely connected to your Web server so that people in www land are not using the same router as your internal staff. (kind of a poor mans load balancing).

It should also be noted that if you plan to connect the two devices switch port to switch port you will need to invest in a special cable known as a cross over cable. Looks like any other network patch except the send and recieve pins are reversed tricking any device into thinking it has passed through a LAN device to get there.

Final problem is that most cheap routers also contain another device called a DHCP server. This device automatically sets up your IP addresses on your network so you dont have to (A very handy device) however if the two router manufacturers have different ideas about how a LAN should be connected you may find some computers are unable to talk to other computers that may be just sitting right next to eachother. This can be overcome by disabling the DHCP server on ONE of your devices. DONT DO IT TO BOTH or you will need to manually configure every computer on your LAN and is a major nuisence.

I hope this has been helpful, if your still unsure you may need to get a networking professional to set up this network for you.

Good luck