I've been using both of my computers online and only one is hooked up on my dsl modem and my isp started charging me extra for using my dialup modem on my laptop. Someone suggested I purchase a router. I was told to buy a Linksys BEFSR41. My dsl modem is hooked up to my macintosh and I want to use my dsl on my gateway laptop. Now that I have the router and looking at the manual for
connecting the hardware if I take the network cable from the modem and plug it into the WAN port port on my router,
doesn't something have to be hooked up to my laptop? I found on the internet where it gives instructions for macintosh with this router. It says to take a cat 5 ethernet cable, plug in your dsl modem to me port on the router marked WAN. Connect
another ethernet cable from the router's LAN port to each computer or to your networks Ethernet hub. If you were to connect this one port router to a network, the red cable would connect to an ethernet hub using the hub's uplink port. Then the other Ethernet cables on the hub would connect to each computer. Now I am so totally confused...I have no idea what I'm doing.
It has to be so very simple and I'm making a major project out of this. Someone please help me out I would really appreciate it. Thank you

AFter reading your post, I looked at my laptop ( I have a gateway solo 5300) It states that I need two network adapters and plug them into me network hub. Is the network hub my modem? I'm more confused now.

Get a basic 4 port hub, any shop will crimp any length of CAT 5 cable for you, you need 3 cables of a length to your needs: 1 to connect each PC to the hub, then 1 from the hub to the router.
That's basic, but hopefully nudge you in the right direction.

Get a basic 4 port hub, any shop will crimp any length of CAT 5 cable for you, you need 3 cables of a length to your needs: 1 to connect each PC to the hub, then 1 from the hub to the router.
That's basic, but hopefully nudge you in the right direction.