Networking advice

[el Chi]

I've just moved into a house with eight (count 'em) other people and naturally we want free por- I mean, we need to do a lot of... research on the internet. Ahem.
Anyways, I've signed up to ntl's 1.5Mb service and we had the guy come round the other day with the modem and wired that in. Now what need to set up is a sort of network so we can all "research" whenever we need to. What I was going to do was link a router to the modem and a switch to that so that more people can access it through lots and lots and lots of wire(we can't get a 10 point router, that'd be too expensive).
I was sort of hoping you fabulous people wouldn't mind giving me some advice regarding what to buy?
Cheers, I just really don't want to f*ck this up and waste a lot of money.

 

[Asus]

You have it right. Hook up a 4-port router (which has a built in switch) along with a 8-port switch dazychained to the router. 3Com, D-Link, Linksys, and Netgear are all good brands.

 

[el Chi]

I may have bought them before anyone has the chance to respond, but are these decent at all?
Netgear FS108 8 Port Switch - Retail (NW-005-NG)
and
US Robotics USR018000A Broadband Router (NW-009-US)
Cheers!

 

[Asus]

Netgear, D-Link and Linksys. They are all good.

 

[DreamThrall]

Isn't Linksys now made by cisco? Cisco = industry standard, usually...

granted, that's kind of like saying Audi makes Volkswagen... but still.