I recently did the same thing for a mate of mine. As his other half was
always complaining about cables all over the place, he wanted wireless
connectivity as well for his laptop, so he went with a Belkin model
F5D7630uk4A 54Mbps Wireless ADSL Router. It has 4 Ethernet ports to handle
any existing hardwired connections, a firewall and at 54Mbps, has plenty of
bandwidth for wireless-g. He went with a Belkin wireless-b card for his
laptop, which is plenty fast enough, considering the BT link is less than
600Kbs.
Installation and configuration were pretty straightforward through the
router's webpage interface - the biggest problem was trying to find where he
had written down his BT Openworld password! The Belkin comes with a little
cheatsheet which has the required settings for most UK ADSL internet service
providers. One thing that's worth doing is to print off the user manual
first to familiarise yourself with the full installation procedure. You will
need to configure using a PC connected to one of the 4 Ethernet ports.
Before you disconnect your USB connection for good, fire it up and open up
the configuration options and write them down. Once up and running,
installation of the PCMCIA wireless network card in the laptop is also quick
and straightforward. you can leave all the USB connection software on the
laptop or PC, It is also a useful fallback if anything happens to the
Belkin.
Testing the wireless in every room in the house and the garden always gave a
70% or better signal strength and quality rating. I connected my laptop
which has a Linksys wireless-b PCMCIA cards in about 30 seconds.
I don't know much about Apple mac kit, but the wireless networking seems
peculiar to apple, (as usual), and may need some more apple kit to connect
wirelessly. If all else fails you can always use a cable connection into one
of the ethernet ports.
The above hardware is not the cheapest, but seems to work fine
--
Regards
David Coles
(E-Mail Removed)
"Beck" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:burbmf$1km$(E-Mail Removed)...
>
>
> Alex Hunsley wrote:
> > My family are on BT openworld broadband (ADSL). Currently they have a
> > (BT provided) USB modem that connects directly the USB port of a
> > windows machine. My brother has a mac, and I want to get him
> > connected too. So I'm looking at changing the USB modem to an ADSL
> > router/modem presumably. Question is, can I just make the change once
> > I have the router/modem, without BT having to know anything? As long
> > as the router/modem masquerades as having the same MAC address as my
> > dads PC, presumably there won't be a problem?
> > Also, can anyone recommend a good bit of kit for this? (i.e. an ADSL
> > router/modem) I used to have the alcatel speedtouch 510 myself, which
> > seemed like a decent bit of kit...
>
> BT need not know about the modem. They wont care if its being used or
not.
> They just may ask for it back if you leave BT.
>
>
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