Is switch a router?

i accidentantally bought a cheap switch thinkin it was a router, and found out at home(to my dismay).I later connected my two pc's and the broadband modem and evrything seemingly works okay.Is there somethign supposed to go wrong??I just connected em together straight outta the box .Is there a reason i still need to consider buying a router?

WHat is thre make and model of your "broadband modem"? This may be providing dhcp ip info to your PCs and routing their traffic to the net for you. run ipconfig /all cmd line for a dump of your ip info. you sould spot you ip, dhcp server, gateway, etc...kalmp3com

I'm using a small netgear,5-port fast ethernet switch 10/100mbps

The reason i got it was so i could play my online game world of warcraft while my sis and friends surf the net on the other comp.

as for the commands you just gave me , i ran them , but i don't really know what i'm lookin for.I basically just wanted to know what advantage a router would have over the switch i'm using.I used to use a router before(it had a an in built switch)

on a side note: 1000 posts yay!!

What is the broadband mode device make and model....not the switch

Physical address is the MAC or hardware address of the network card in teh PC

DHCP enabled if yes means the nic will broadcast for network config info from a DHCP server. That would get you an IP address, network mask and a default gateway to other networks like teh Internet.... You can try to browse to http://##.##.##.## where #### etc is the default gateway. That may get you to a signon to the cable modem(?router?) device.