stomachmonkey,
wll, there are reasons why I hve that much devices for what I need. I used to have more routers behind a switch and it used to work when I had DSL. I am not arguing that it will definitely works with cable, but I am looking for solution which allow me to have at least that many devices.

Basically, to make it short, the switch stays with the cable modem. 1 single cable run to up stair to a router for 3 or 4 computers. In the near future, I will need another router there (up stair) for another set of IP addresses.
Another cable from that same switch to another router to take care of down stair. This will have 2 computers.
I don't want wireless at all to these computers, unless for guesses.
On the cable modem, there is only one lan port.
For a second, you can see now that if I use less number of routers, I will only have one set of IP. If I set all router and modem at the same place, I will have to run cable everywhere back and forth.

Cable modems only like to be bonded to one "smart" device at a time, unlike most DSL which will let you get away with the switch before the routers.

So it needs to go Cable Modem -> Router it likes -> Other stuff.

Still seems convoluted.

"Cable modems only like to be bonded to one "smart" device at a time"
Sounds like what I am encoutering with now. I was hoping someone can confirm this with me. If this is true, I will try cable modem -> rounter -> branch to several more routers.
Thanks.

Not going to get into the differences between DSL and Broadband providers and how their networks are provisioned.

Point is setting it up the same way obviously does not work so you need to forget about that and start from scratch following some basic rules.

Cable modem has one ethernet jack so very likely it's only capable of providing 1 ip address. We'd save some time and trouble knowing the make and model which is why I asked but now we'll just have to make that assumption.

You should be connecting, cable modem->router->switch.

Ethernet out of cable modem to WAN port on the router. May also be labeled uplink or be the first/#1 port on the back of the router, it may also be slightly separated from the other ports.

The router will almost certainly have DHCP enabled, depending on the brand it will default to assigning addresses as 192.168.0.x or 192.168.1.x or even 192.168.10.x.

You can hook your switch up to it and any other devices you want to the switch and that should all work.

For the second router run and ethernet cable from one of the remaining LAN ports on router 1 to the WAN port on the 2nd router. Connect a switch or other devices behind that.

Power up the cable modem 1st, wait till it is in a ready state. Power up router 1 next, wait till it is in a ready state. Then whatever switch is behind it and the devices behind that. Then power up router 2 etc.....

Sure, I tell him the same thing pages ago and he ignores me, must be the "Mystic" in your name, gives you cred.;)

It's because DSL can be set up as 2 56k pipes.

The simple way to think about it is it's two separate broadband connections.

The switch before the routers was directing traffic from the two routers to their respective lines.

Yeah, I saw that, sometimes stuff just has to be rephrased a few times. :)

The reason for it here in the Seattle area is that the Comcast cable modems lock to one MAC address, and unless you leave them powered off for about 10 minutes they wouldn't release that and work with a different device, be it a PC, router, or whatever.

Verizon and Qwest DSL on the other hand often are set to bridge mode, so they just hand out IPs like candy to the remote network if you have stuff hooked to a switch first.

I'm sure you knew that though, but just in case other people reading were kinda lost.

I still think there are simpler ways to do this project, though I still don't quite follow what the project *is*. :D

Cablevision in NY used to be like that when they 1st rolled out broadband. You could hook a simple hub up to your cable modem and you were good to go with as many addresses as you wanted.

They used to try and bang you an additional $25 per IP address they handed out.

The service was spotty in the early days so you'd be on the phone with them a lot and the tech would mention that I had multiple devices which was not allowed.

I'd say no I don't, he'd say I can see all the addresses that have been allocated to you.

So I'd explain to him, as I disconnected all but one device form the hub, that I was aware that they flushed their caches manually and what he was seeing was the same device in my house getting a new address after a power cycle.

He'd get the cache flushed and only see one address again.

StomachMonkey,
oh man, it's getting a little out of the way. Sorry if I was not clear on my question/explanation.
It's not that I ignored you, no I don't. It's just that I am still looking for solution to make it works and I am not giving up yet. I totally understand you suggested to have switch after the router. I am sure it is the best way to set up a home network, but it's just not the best solution for my case. 1) because if I have a router in place of the switch, I don't need the switch after the router (router already has 4 ports). 2) I can just replace the switch with another router. that is routers after routers, as I responded to MysticLlama. Why do I need more than 1 routers? Because I need to have more than 1 IP addresses. And if you read the way I run my cable (above response), you'll see that I want to eliminate running cable back and forth between up and down stair. Right now, I have 1 cable gooing up stair. I hope I can keep it that way, if possible.
Thank you.

wait a min, did you say that they didn't allow you to have multiple devices which create more IP addresses in "your house"? I thought, as long as your get the devices and hook them up in your garage, they are all yours.

BTW, I thought only router can give you IP. I didn't know hub can.

That's why I asked that series of questions.

It would help to know exactly what you have.

Unless tou are aetting up a bunch of high demand porn servers I doubt you need the switch.

Hub can't give out an IP address. Their modems were open, any and all devices attachéd to them could obtain an address direct from the ISP.

Okay... starting to follow.

Do you need two routers because you're hoping to have 2 real *public* IP addresses, with differing PCs behind them?

In that case, and with the cable modem only bonding to one, we may need to go a different route (pun intended) to solve the issue.

mysticlama, what is pun? Tell me if you have any opinion.

monkey, forgot to get you the modem brand.

Anyway, just got home now with another router. I am ready to rip everything out and start over with "router after router". Now, I agree... I have too many routers involved. Hopefully, not another up all night again.

Okay, I see two ways to go about this:

1.) You for some reason need two incoming IPs, and this is why you're hanging onto two routers. Either a.) call the cable company and get them to assign you a 2nd IP (usually $10/mo. or so) so both routers will work, or b.) try to figure out how to forward different ports to accomplish the incoming traffic you need.

2.) You just need more internal IPs than the one router is giving out. This could possibly be fixed by using the main router to hand out ALL IPs (set the range bigger so you have more, probably 192.168.0.2-192.168.0.254), and turning OFF DHCP on the 2nd router and just using the ports other than the uplink port as a switch upstairs.

3.) We may still not understand what you're trying to do with the IPs.

The two problems you have going on:
1.) The cable modem won't give real IPs to two devices.
2.) Two routers linked together nearly always have problems doing NAT (network address translation) twice. The translation of a translation doesn't go through.

A pun is a bad joke. :)

Got them all up, "routers after routers", and they are all working fine. I turned on some hulu on 3 different computers and they keep running smoothly.
The bad news is that I even I have different internal IPs, they are all still same one external IP. The good news is, now I know I can't have multiple external IPs with cable.
With DSL, I used to purchase a line with 1 single IP and can have multiple external IPs to host different web servers and other purposes. Look like I am leaning back to DSL again.
Thanks everyone.

I just realized that I have been hijacking this thread from DAEpperson. Sorry.