Broadband Home networking

Just a few stupid questions. Im fortunate enough to have moved into a rented house that allready has a network hub of some kind, there is a hub under the stairs that has wires to several rooms. My question is, can you run more than one adsl modem on a single phone line on the same account. There are three of us.

im presuming i need a adsl modem with built in networker which i can then plug its network outputs to the existing hub which will take it to the socketc s in our rooms. Any ideas chaps, sorry for the vague description.

I was thinking of starting an account with pipex, as i have heard nopthing but good things about them.

 

No you can't, you might be better buying an ADSL router with built in hub and WiFi and share the same ADSL line, splitting the ADSL cost between the 3 of you.

1 phone line = 1 ADSL line.

Something like this would be fine, if bandwidth becomes an issue increase the ADSL bandwidth.

zen.co.uk are quite good too.

 

Yup I installed the above in my girlfriends office and it was a real joy to use. I'd never really done that kind of thing before but it took less than a day to get 4 pc's installed and on the network and internet. Bonus also being you can take it to your next house and reuse it.

 

Look at products from Netgear, D-Link, Allied Telesyn and 3 Com to name but a few. Make sure that the ADSL router you go for actually has the ADSL modem built into it. A lot of products advertising themselves as Broadband routers don't actually have the modem built in.

My recommendation would probably be the D-Link 504T which has a 4 port hub built into it, but as you say that you already have a hub then you could go for D-Link 502T and then plug it into your exisiting hub using a crossover cable.

IMHO be wary of wireless as even though the specs may state up to 100 metres range this drops considerably once inside a house.

HTH

 

To be honest I think you'd need a damm big house to exceed the range of a wireless network. Basic placement of the hub should allow for a pretty wide coverage area. Although too wide and half the street can piggy back your access!

 

I'd love to be able to agree with you, but bitter experience has shown me otherwise. Any bigger than your standard 2 up 2 down terrace then I will not guarantee total coverage (I install a lot of these). In some circumstances I've experienced total failure in a particular room even when the laptop and wirless router are placed in that room - worked fine as long as the router and computers were placed outside the room. Other times I've had situations where the neighbours have had better coverage than the house that the router is installed in regardless of router placement.

Thickness of walls is a big killer as is a lot of RFI such as leaky microwaves (yes I do tell people that its dangerous when I find that's the cause) DECT phones etc

Anyways since the house is already cabled would it not make sense to make use of them???

 

wow some what suprised by that, I'll agree to go with your experience then. Actually missed the bit about the wires :shame:

 

Philip, my flat in Lisbon is quite large but not *that* large and I can easily get out of range of my wireless hub. Any further than about 10m away and the connection becomes unusable. In the bedroom, which is about 15-20m away from the hub (passing through 4 walls) there is no wireless network detectable.

The wireless card on the laptop is a Linksys one which doesn't have "range" issues when in other peoples houses or at airports etc. The wirelss access point was also Linksys but it went belly up and I replaced it with an Asus one - both had similar range issues in our flat.

Michael.

 

DECT phones operate at 1.8 to 1.9 Ghz 802.11b & 11g operate at 2.4GHz

ADSL routers with inbuilt hub & wifi aren't that much more that an ADSL router with a hub, you never know when you might want to surf the internet from the garden or the toilet

 

OK so its a Swedish open plan living thing! I'll shut up now

 

Yeah I know, but I recently delt with a guy who was constantly losing his wireless network. It just happend to coincide with when he was using his DECT phone. He switched to using a traditional wired phone on my advice, problem went away. Having said that, most of the time there's no problems.

May well have been that in that room the signals produced by the DECT phone bounced around the room and manged to create a harmonic in the 2.4GHz range. I don't know for certain but thats the only half plausable explananation that I can think of.

Edited to add that I find a little concerning that the wifi frequencys are so close to microwave oven frequencys - Microwaves operate at 2.45Ghz wifi operates at 2.4Ghz. Admittedly the ouput of a wifi system is a very very small fraction than that of a microwave oven and is unlikly to harm.

 

Oddly enough, we don't have any range issues with DECT phones in the flat but we do with our wireless central heating thermostat/controller which really does require line of sight to the antenna on the boiler in order to work. Unfortunately this means the thermostat has to be in the kitchen which is less than ideal

Michael.