router/hub/internet connection sharing

i have the following setup:


so all of subnet b's outgoing/incoming internet traffic has to go thru a. would it be better to set it up like so with a hub? is that what a hub is for?

I may be totally wrong as I'm not a sysadmin/network guy, but AFAIK you should go with option 1.

As it was explained to me before the difference between routers and hubs is basically that the router is "smarter" about where it sends the packets and only needs to send via the exact network path to the proper machine, however hubs basically just send the data down all ports looking for the correct comp.

If this is the case, then I'd go with cascading switches instead of the switches from a hub. Let me know what additional info you find out and what you decide.

HTH,
-b

yea i think your right, that's what i managed to gather from googling at least. i think the hub will actually cause more problems then its worth since this if for a home cable internet LAN. it will be forwarding incoming traffic to both of the routers, and this is the part im confused, who are going to both have the same external ip addresses? i guess i'll just stick to what i have setup now or convince the tech supports guys at my isp to give me 2 ip addresses

edit: well after some moving and shifting of routers and wires im now back at what i had in the first place in figure 1 what i have done is place router B as the DMZ host for router A. so now router b is open to the internet as well. but here is my new problem, the way that i configure router B to be in the DMZ is by adding its local router A ip address. so for example, router A has ip 192.168.1.1 and its routees(lol) are 192.168.1.10X . so router B has an ip of lets say 192.168.1.102, so in the router A settings page i put local IP 192.168.1.102 into the DMZ. the problem is that i want to be able to assign the DMZ by MAC address and not local ip since im using DHCP those local ip's could change and then i would stick the wrong computer out into the open. so w/o turning off DHCP, is there some hackish way i can get the router to assign by MAC address instead off ip ?

DHCP works in one of two ways:

When a card asks for an ip, give it the one it used it have if available, else a new one (this is the most common case in my experience).

When it asks for an IP, give it a different one that the last one it had (more "secure" method, truely making IPs more dynamic).

I have a hardware router and it's the DHCP server and is set to forward a few ports to a particular box (x.x.1.140) and I've never had that change on me. When I swaped parts around and the NIC that was in that machine moved, so did its old IP, but that's the only time I've seen it change.

Curious, why do you have two routers? One router to route the internet amongst the home farm, and forward ports for specific services to a server or two. You can daisy chain switches and still be on the same routed "network". Broadcasts packets still propagate between the two.

And if you really want it to work off MAC addys, what is routing? A computer (running what OS/routing service)? Dedicated hardware (what make/model)?