I recently went away for the weekend and when I returned home, my dad did SOMETHING to our router that caused it to blow out. Now his computer and my mom's Macbook currently connect up through a switch that was in my room used to connect my computer and my Xbox 360 to the internet.

The main line that brought the internet upstairs was plugged into the back of my computer and the other end in this switch downstairs where my router used to be. It is the only computer that is hooked up to the network that CANNOT connect to the internet. I am running Windows Vista (I highly doubt this is the problem though).

Can anyone make sense of this? Do I need to buy yet ANOTHER router? Or is it possible to connect up to the internet sans router (it's possible on the account this computer is connected to the internet). It seems the computer's connect using their external IP...problem is that I don't know the Default Gateway for my own PC.

If ANYONE can shed some light on this overly complex situation. PLEASE HELP!

Well I'm assuming you have high speed so you probably have a modem of sort cable or dsl. Sounds like your modem is only assigning two computers ip addresses and not letting the third on. My dsl modem used to only work with a single computer until I learned some tricks. Simply run ipconfig/all in the command line on a computer that works and that should give you all the info you need to set up the computer with a static ip. Just set the computer with a slight differenet IP. For example if of your IP addresses is 192.168.1.22 make it 192.168.1.23. If you are truly connected directly to the internet this might not work although I would be amazed if your ISP gave you two externat IP addresses as you claim.

The previous post is mostly correct. Your DSL or Cable modem will probably only assign 2 IP addresses. It sounds like the modem is connected to a switch instead of a true router. The right way to set this up is to connect the modem (cable or DSL) to the Internet port on a router, then connect the computers to any of the other ports. The router will accept the IP address from the internet providor (which is a unique registered IP like 65.65.x.x or something) and then broadcast DHCP addresses to your computers that will be something like 192.168.1.x. The default gwy will be the IP of the router's LAN interface which will probably be 192.168.1.1, or 192.168.0.1. The easiest way to tell is to click start, run, type cmd and press enter. Then type ipconfig and press enter. Do this from a computer that works. If the IP address is 192.168.something then you're behind a router already and you have other problems. If it's something else like 65.something, then you are connected directly to the cable modem. You can pick up a decent router for $50 or so. If you want wireless, then get the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54. It's the best.

strongly agree but I figured he was just trying to be cheap as noted by the title he had a router and it blew out. I also agree Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 great router.