Thinking of getting broadband through PlusNet

Hoping to get the above and have a couple of queries.

From what I've seen the best setup would appear to be through a router, yes
or no ?

If yes whats a good make ?

Have two pc in the house mine and my mums, Is there a cheap wireless
solution

Are PlusNet any good.

In article <bf9eib$1iq$(E-Mail Removed)>, Richard Rollins wrote:
> Hoping to get the above and have a couple of queries.
>
> From what I've seen the best setup would appear to be through a router, yes
> or no ?
>
> If yes whats a good make ?
>
> Have two pc in the house mine and my mums, Is there a cheap wireless
> solution
>
> Are PlusNet any good.

Plusnet unmetered dial-up seems reasonably good, and they seem to be
consistently in various magazine and website "top ten" lists for ADSL, so
I'll probably just upgrade what I've already got.

A combined ADSL modem, router, firewall and ethernet switch (i.e. several
ethernet sockets) seems to be the neatest arrangement, as it includes
everything in one box and allows for a bit of future expansion. Read reviews
of some equipment on www.adslguide.org.uk or www.broadband-help.com and check
the newsgroups for chat about problems with particular makes. Personally I
think the Draytek ones look good because they are very configurable and I
haven't seen much about problems (except from people trying to flash upgrade
them without disconnecting them from the line), but it's your money.

Wireless ethernet doesn't seem particularly fast compared with cable. OK for
typing your novel on the laptop in the garden perhaps, but backups of tens of
megabytes of pictures will seem sluggish. Most combined wireless routers seem
to be 802.11b, which is only 11mB/s. If you want the faster and more recent
802.11g, it will probably have to be a separate box - probably better anyway
because this unit needs to be positioned for best radio reception, which
would not necessarily be the best place to put an ethernet switch.

Rod.

"Plusnet Support Team" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:6mXRa.48602$(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> "Richard Rollins" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote
in message
> news:bf9eib$1iq$(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> Hi,
>
> > Hoping to get the above and have a couple of queries.
> >
> > From what I've seen the best setup would appear to be
through a router,
> yes
> > or no ?
> >
>
> A router is certainly more convenient as you plan to share
the connection to
> more than one machine.
>
> > If yes whats a good make ?

I have the D-Link DSL-504. Does the job for me. I believe
there is a wireless version.

> There are many good brands out there, we supply the
Solwise SAR110 with our
> hardware starter packs which performs well. You could do
worse than have a
> look at the hardware reviews over at
http://www.adslguide.org.uk which cover
> a number of different routers.
>
> > Have two pc in the house mine and my mums, Is there a
cheap wireless
> > solution
> >
> > Are PlusNet any good.
> >
> I'll leave that one for others to give an impartial
opinion! Feel free to
> ask if you have any other questions regarding our service.

I have the PlusNet ADSL Home account, upgraded from a
connect dial up account, and have found PlusNet to be good.
Have a look at www.ispreview.co.uk, there are reader reviews
so you can compare PlusNet with other ISPs. Should you
decide on PlusNet you might put "safeprod" in the referrer
box. That will get me a small discount.

Best of luck with your search. ADSL is worth it.

--
Old Codger
e-mail use reply to field

Richard Rollins wrote:

> Hoping to get the above and have a couple of queries.
>
> From what I've seen the best setup would appear to be through a router, yes
> or no ?

Router is best. Usually simpler to setup for security as well (i.e. the
net is not connected to Windows!)

> If yes whats a good make ?

We have supplied various Solwise ones to customers. Not had any problems
so far. Having said that there are plenty of others to choose from that
are good.

> Have two pc in the house mine and my mums, Is there a cheap wireless
> solution

Depends on what you mean by cheap! A SAR715PVW has built in wireless.
Note you can add wireless to any ADSL setup with a simple Wireless
Access Point. Sometimes there are advantages to having the WAP in a
second box rather than built into the router (i.e. more flexibility
siting it etc). Solwise do some 22mbs stuff that seems to work OK for
the same money as most 11mbs kit.

> Are PlusNet any good.

Yup - not bad. The news feed could do with a bit more history - but in
the important areas they seem fine.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

"Plusnet Support Team" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:6mXRa.48602$(E-Mail Removed)...
"we supply the Solwise SAR110 with our hardware starter packs which performs
well"

1) Has no support for file transfers with MSN Messenger
2) Plusnet charge around £15 more for this than you can buy it directly from
insight for.
3) The router is a bitch to set up and plusnet are fucksquared useless in
supporting it and I quote "Go to the solwise forum" is the stock answer for
all issues.

On the other side of the coin:>
The service is fairly priced
They carry a good selection of newsgroups
The downtime is acceptable but noteable
Webspace offers PHP hosting with MySql (but many of us would have liked asp
hosting with sql server/access - and would have been happy to pay extra)
They give you two static IP's on basic accounts.

If you're happy with a router that can be a challange to set up and moving
files with MSN is something you do not do, the solwise is great little
router - but shop around for it.

"Guiseppe Salamone" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:4W6Sa.50411$(E-Mail Removed)...

<big snip>

> They give you two static IP's on basic accounts.

Two? How do you get the second one? I take this is for a No-NAT setup? I saw
no options for choosing No-NAT when I recently upgraded my account to "ADSL
Home 500".

Stephen.

On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 11:26:22 +0100, "Stephen Smith"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:


>Two? How do you get the second one? I take this is for a No-NAT setup? I saw
>no options for choosing No-NAT when I recently upgraded my account to "ADSL
>Home 500".

Hi Stephen.

The option is not currently available at signup, but any residential
account can have a 4 IP block, which can be added at any point after
your ADSL account is activated. You need to be able to justify your IP
usage (Ie tell us why you need additional IPs and why you can't do
what you need with NAT / Virtual hosting). If you raise a ticket via
Contact Us, we can progress this for you - The IPs are normally added
immediately and at no charge. We are currently reviewing our IP
allocation procedures, and it may be that larger blocks become
available for residential users in the near future.

With Regards,

Ian
--
| Ian Wild Unmetered & ADSL solutions
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
+ ------- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -------

Would be great if they put as much effort into answering their tickets as
well as this.....


"PlusNet Support Team" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 09:04:14 +0100, "Guiseppe Salamone"
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> >1) Has no support for file transfers with MSN Messenger
>
> This was the case with the vast majority of routers on sale, due to a
> lack of support for the protocols involved. Since the launch of MSN
> Messenger 6, file transfers now work and this is no longer an issue
> with any router (The same applies to voice and webcam usage). This was
> never a problem with the routers, but with Microsoft not using
> protocols supported by the vast majority of NAT routers.
>
> >2) Plusnet charge around £15 more for this than you can buy it directly
from
> >insight for.
>
> I wasn't aware of this. Which Insight stock code are you looking at? I
> would like to investigate this further as we do aim to provide the
> hardware we sell at a price below what is available from anyone else.
> Have you included the cost of splitters / delivery in that
> calculation?
>
> >3) The router is a bitch to set up and plusnet are fucksquared useless in
> >supporting it and I quote "Go to the solwise forum" is the stock answer
for
> >all issues.
>
> The router is pretty simple to get running using the quick start setup
> and it does come with a clear install guide for a basic single IP
> setup. It gets more complicated if you want to setup port forwarding,
> multiple IP blocks etc. Our support team will only ever be able to
> support the simple configuration but one of the reasons we like
> Solwise is that the support they provide is more than adequate for
> even the most advanced setups.
> ...
>
> >Webspace offers PHP hosting with MySql (but many of us would have liked
asp
> >hosting with sql server/access - and would have been happy to pay extra)
>
> That isn't what the result of a recent poll over in our forums
> (http://forums.plus.net) indicated. Feel free to re-raise the topic in
> the ideas forum and we can have some more debate. We have said we
> would provide this is there was enough demand to make the service
> viable.
>
> With Regards,
>
> Ian
> --
> | Ian Wild Unmetered & ADSL solutions
> | Customer Support for Home & Business
> | PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
> + ------- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -------

On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 21:04:36 +0100, "Guiseppe Salamone"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Would be great if they put as much effort into answering their tickets as
>well as this.....
>

Hi,

Feel free to let me have a ticket number where you feel we haven't
dealt with anything appropriately or quickly enough and I will be
happy to review it and see what we can do to make your experience
better in the future.

We have come along leaps and bounds over the last six months in terms
of dealing with Contact Us tickets in an efficient and timely manner,
but I'm the first to say that we still have a fair way to go in making
this system perfect!

Regards,

Ian
--
| Ian Wild Unmetered & ADSL solutions
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
+ ------- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -------

On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 20:36:45 +0100, Roderick Stewart <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>A combined ADSL modem, router, firewall and ethernet switch (i.e. several
>ethernet sockets) seems to be the neatest arrangement, as it includes
>everything in one box and allows for a bit of future expansion.

[...]

Is there a particular "standard" for "combined ADSL modem, router, firewall and ethernet switch"
equipment, or can you name particular models so I can do a search at Insight & other suppliers?

Thanks.