I think you might getting confused here. The building blocks are just the same for a typical ADSL connection. With ADSL you would have: Ethernet switch <---> Ethernet router <---> terminator <---> network <----> ISP (where terminator is just the plug on the wall) With NBN you would typically have: Ethernet switch <---> ADSL router <---> NBN terminator <---> network <----> ISP (where terminator is a bit more fancy) Typically your switch/router might be one box that has both functions combined. You plug all your computers in the the switch. The switch being just a switch has no IP address. The switch connects to your router. The router, would typically hand out private IP addresses (using DHCP) to all your computers. The router itself would obtain a public IPv4 address from your ISP using PPP (ADSL case) or DHCP (NBN case). It in turn would masquerade the private IP addresses to the public IP address for all external access. Ideally you would get more then one public IPv4 address from your ISP, and this would help use certain protocols that don't work well with masquerading. However this will cost extra (same as for ADSL). NBN isn't a solution to the running out of IPv4 address space problem. You need IPv6 to solve that. Does this help? -- Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>