Broadband advice sought (Newbie)

At present I am on Dial-up and want to get on to BB. I know I can receive it
all right, but when my local exchange was enabled last year, I tried to get
established and had so much trouble with the supplied USB modem installation
(system freezes and so on) that I took fright and cancelled the whole thing.
I have two machines, one upstairs (about 10-15 metres in a straight line)
which I would want to share the BB connection.

What I would like is some kind of router which I could use for dial-up until
I'm ready to go on BB and then could connect the two machines wirelessly and
share a printer and so on.

Any suggestions?


Regards and thanks in advance


P J Macguire

 

souns like making work for works sake. Just get on and get a combined
ADSL modem/router wireless thing and do it properly. £50 from Tesco


integrating a dialup connection into it is going to take effort and is
non-trivial. Forget it.

Phil

 

Aaargh! Why bother to wait ? Why even think about sticking with dial-up for
another month let alone 6 As you're after wireless, there are lots of
reviews on the ADSLguide.org site. For sharing, you would do well to ask
here or in uk.comp.home-networking if you haven't done this before (watch
out for some new printer which has drivers only for Win XP, but the second
PC is running Win 98SE or something, as sharing will be awkward/impossible)

Finally, whatever else you do, get a cable and use an ethernet card for the
PC near the router... setting it up over wireless (and possibly locking it
out if you make some security change) will mean you'll need the cable, and
with only one PC using wireless they will not 'compete' with one another to
access the router. Anyway, you'll have lots more to enjoy once you have a
bit more (a LOT more) speed (based on 40+ months with ADSL). Peter M.

[ Almost forgot - there was mention of a combined ADSL modem/router and 56k
dial-up modem from Aldi recently. Have only seen people having probs, so
that's best avoided... or worth researching to double check first. ]

 

Thanks for that but how would I manage with access to dial-up, for backup
service if BB is down?


Regards


P J Macguire

 

It sounds as though your overcomplicating things in your mind.

Obviously you are on the internet now - hence your message. It is
acceptable to leave the current modem in your PC as well as the
proposed Broadband Hardware.

When using Broadband the connecting cable goes into the ADSL slot on
the filter - to go back to 56k modem usage you simply swithch from the
ADSL cable and insert the normal phone line cable as at present.

KM

 

Why do you think it will be "down" at all. BB connections can even keep
working when you have a line fault.
You seem to be looking back at your past failings and finding a more
complicated and costly alternative so if you still have problems setting up
your network you can have something to blame.

Just get a ADSL Modem/Router wth 54G wireless, FOLLOW the setup guide its
supplied and enable security on the Wireless. then setup the PCs making
sure you use DHCP and you should have no problems.

BB is only as complicated as you want to make it.

Ian

 

By a modem?

They are dirt cheap ATM.

--
Cheers,

Guy

** Stress - the condition brought about by having to
** resist the temptation to beat the living daylights
** out of someone who richly deserves it.

 

Oopsie: 'Buy a modem'.

--
Cheers,

Guy

** Stress - the condition brought about by having to
** resist the temptation to beat the living daylights
** out of someone who richly deserves it.

 

Uh, no need to buy one as he's already using one. I cannot remember just
where the 56k modems are (I went to a router for ISDN in 2001, and to BB
in 2002 and haven't needed to dial up any of the ADSL service providers
in the past 40+ months. When visiting the neighbour of a friend to be
able to help her get online with dial-up it was shocking how slow and
painful it was both to get connected and do anything online... PGM.

 

In all probability, your previous bad experience, with system hangs
etc, was due to bad drivers or a system that couldn't support the
supplied ADSL modem (which if was the Alcatel "frog" wouldn't be
surprising, since many systems didn't have the required chipset/power
availability to run the modem).

ADSL is stable as far as my experience goes - over two years with 2
outages, both of less than a few hours, with BT broadband.

Just re-order and buy an ADSL modem/router. You always have the
option of plugging in the old modem if you lose ADSL (which is unlikely).

--
Regards,
Danny

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Gold blend)
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