It would make more sense but there are spatial/physical caveats that
make it nessieary.
You connections would make more sense if the cable/DSL modem input was
connected to a router and each of the three systems were also connected
to
the same router.
The VoIP "gizmo" (as Sunrocket calls it) is also a router so in effect
the cable modem is connected directly to a router (just a router with
only 1 physical ethernet port/connection). The problem is that this
router which our VoIP provider requires only has one physical plug for
a ethernet cable, plus we would have to run two *very* long cables
around the house to get them to the other two computers, one cable is
enough of a PITA as is.
A second router and a hub are unnecessary.
As far as i can tell they are nessary (I'm not a networking guru so if
you still disagree some more ideas would of course be appricated). We
have one computer right by the cable modem/voip-router setup but since
we want to connect that computer and two other computers we needed a
"spliter" (this is where the hub comes in; i thought it would be better
to have the 2nd [regular, non-voip] router here but *nothing* worked
when i put it there so we put the hub back there) so one cable goes
from the hub to the closer computer and the other cable goes to a
router up stairs in the opposite side of the house (big house, lots of
cabling using just one cable, using two would be even more headache)
from that router cables go to the other two computers.
This is a discount setup using cables/hubs/routers we had set aside
(that weren't going to be used for anything else) so that is another
factor, seems a waste to buy more equip when we have stuff laying
around.
