Cable newbie - couple questions

[Easy1]

Finally! Cable internet in this little hick town. OK - so they provided modem and nic and set it up on Win98 box. No firewall privided so I grabbed ZoneAlarm. Fine so far. Then I notice Toshiba modem also has USB connector. Great! I decide to install XP box also. Big mistake. I had the boxes connected via xover cable for file sharing - "had" is the operative word there. Screwed everything up so badly I nuked it all. So, two questions:
1. Will connecting both systems via one modem even work, or should I just give up and buy a router?
2. Is the XP firewall worth using or should I install something else?

 

[Rwalter63]

At the current low price of routers with built in 4 port switch's buy one. You can pick one up for under $30 after rebates. Check out the Hot Deal thread on this forum. You could use ICS on your XP box but you will need toput in an another ethernet adapter to make that work properly. Your ISP is probably set to only give out 1 IP address per customer so you can not utilze the USB port and the RJ45 ethernet port at the same time.