Please Help - Going from Dial-Up To Cable

[Slowhand]

I am about to switch fro Dial-up to cable( my MSN obligation is over).
The thing is I know zilch about cable so I have a few questions...

The cable company said I will need and ethernet card? Do I? What does an ethernet card do? I have a Gigabyte GA -VAXP motherboard.

I would rather buy a cable modem what is a good modem? Someone said Motorola over Linksys, sincethey had problems with Linksys on our cable system.

I would appreciate your help.

Thanks!

[PresterJohn]

>The cable company said I will need and ethernet card? Do I? What does an ethernet card do? I have a Gigabyte GA -VAXP motherboard.
>I would rather buy a cable modem what is a good modem?

that motherboard already has a ethernet port built-in.

usually the cable company provides you with a free cablemodem (and a ethernet cable) as part of the package.

all you really need to do is connect a y-splitter to the cabletv cable and then the cablemodem to that. then connect the ethernet cable from the cablemodem to the ethernet port at the back of the pc. make sure your tcp/ip settings have DCHP enabled

nothing to buy...later on if you want to connect other machines to the internet, you can buy a router.