thanks for taking the time to reply, i really appreciate it. i know i may sound like an ungrateful div here, but i know all these possible combinations.
1. basically i am £12k in debt and £30 is simply too much - this was meant as a short term solution as me and the missus are living with my folks for a month or so.
2. likewise i would connect it via usb and then to the missus' computer via the ethernet (thats what i did at my last house) but my comp is actually just under 10m away from the modem (im using a 10m ethernet cable up the stairs etc).
erm, thinking about it, could someone just point me to the "how to" set up the host computer to NTL, assuming (pretending) that i have 2 network cards. I just want to try doing it that way.
i have also found this
http://www.usbgear.com/link/usb_cable_setup.html which suggests that it can be done. is there a different between a netlink and a direct link cable? this is certainly all very confusing!
anyway, again, thanks for your help so far guys and id certainly appreciate a link to the relevant how to (im not lazy just depressed and as pathetic as this might sound, i get very stressed trying to search for things).
thanks very much again,
mike