Online Gaming on Blueyonder

I have a Telewest Blueyonder 750kb Broadband connection which we
happily share between 2 PCs using a router.

My son is keen to get into PS2 online gaming. Now, after reading all
Telewest's confusing marketing stuff, in which they try to sell you
things you could get cheaper elsewhere (surely their "Dual Connection"
is nothing more than an overpriced router), it seems clear that he
could plug his PS2 into a third socket on our router and use it.
Except that Blueyonder want to charge £5 a month for their "Gaming
Service". Some of his friends have BT ADSL connections and none of
them seem to have to pay any equivalent fee. So (a) what do you get
for the money? and (b) will online gaming work even if you don't pay
it? If you don't have to pay it, can he just get the PS2 network
adapter, plug it in and start playing, without even telling Telewest?

Can anyone enlighten me, please?

TIA

Liam

They charge you the extra £5 so that you're cable modem has a second IP
address available to give to the PS2. This allows your broadband connection
to be shared and you can use both devices simultaneously.

What Telewest don't tell you though is that you can use both together by
using Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) - whereby your PC acts as a simple
router, or you can buy a hardware router with NAT (this allows you to
connect a network to the Internet when you've only got one IP address) that
will also allow you achieve the same.

I would suggest you check their T's and C's before doing anything though.

Ben


"Liam the Llama" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) om...
>I have a Telewest Blueyonder 750kb Broadband connection which we
> happily share between 2 PCs using a router.
>
> My son is keen to get into PS2 online gaming. Now, after reading all
> Telewest's confusing marketing stuff, in which they try to sell you
> things you could get cheaper elsewhere (surely their "Dual Connection"
> is nothing more than an overpriced router), it seems clear that he
> could plug his PS2 into a third socket on our router and use it.
> Except that Blueyonder want to charge £5 a month for their "Gaming
> Service". Some of his friends have BT ADSL connections and none of
> them seem to have to pay any equivalent fee. So (a) what do you get
> for the money? and (b) will online gaming work even if you don't pay
> it? If you don't have to pay it, can he just get the PS2 network
> adapter, plug it in and start playing, without even telling Telewest?
>
> Can anyone enlighten me, please?
>
> TIA
>
> Liam