[gkhewitt]

Hmm. The problem is that access points are designed to operate on one network. Routers, essentially, operate on two.

When you connect your cable modem to a router, you're connecting it to the WAN (wide-area network) segment of the router. The router then also has a LAN (local-area network) segment for your PCs are routes the traffic between the two.

Access points do no such thing and, sadly, the multiple user argument is irrelevant. If you plugged your cable modem directly into the PC then that would be fine. However, the when you plug the access point directly to the cable modem, it acts like a single PC would, and unless there is some routing going on (or what's know as NAT or internet connection sharing) then nothing else can use the connection. NTL allows you *one* IP address for connection of *one* device. By using a router you can allow other devices to share this IP, in effect. But since access points are more like hubs than routers, they cannot share the internet in this fashion

I hope that makes some sort of sense, and I'm sure there's someone out there that can explain it slightly better than me :o)

Basically... you'll need a router I'm afraid. To save money you could buy a cheapy 'wired' router and plug the access point into that, rather than buying an all-out wireless router.

Best of luck