Broadband

[Chris Knight]

Roger,
You are right of course - it's hard to find an accurate and succinct description that makes sense to someone who has no knowledge of the subject.

I also agree about the "curve". Too often one is at the bleeding edge and acting unwittingly as a beta tester for some manufacturer who has nicely worked out that a few court cases are cheaper by far than a full blown testing progamme. Still, I sympathise with them, by the time an in-house programme had worked out the bugs, the gadget would be fit only for the Science Museum!

 

[Anonymous]

if you are far away from the exchange, you might only be able to get 512 broadband, alot of ISPs sell this as their lowest product AOL Silver for example, Wanadoo (soon to become Orange have a low level entry product at 512 too)

What out for this if you want routers, home network or multiple computers connected, the lowest rated and cheapest products will often have the ability for home networking with wireless routers and multiple devices disabled.

Check what the highest speed you can get is, if you are in the back of beyond, you might only be able to get 512 on a long line.

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry, secondpost in the space of 5 minutes.

On the wireless router side of things, I have a Netgear DG834GT running on a 1Mb AOL connection. My line noise margin thingie is 43db which is right on the border for me to get 2mb, so I am 1mb, but well within limits for 1mb, hence no line faults, intermitent or otherwise.

Its been up for hours and hours, absolutely fantastic piece of kit. Doesnt seem to get too hot, which is sometimes a problem, looks more like an ipod than a router, which pleases the wife and the wireless has been faultless, reaches all round the house and into the garden.

I did have a Linksys WAG54G, worked great for a while, but the wireless went berserk after a later firmware update, so I binned it (firmware is the operating system loaded onto the router btw)

All said, love this Netgear router and its been QA'd to death by AOL, who wont rate ANYTHING as supported unless its been tested thoroughly (home networking is a nightmare for ISPs to support at the best of time, never mind if you havent tested at least one of two bits of kit and decided to support them)

I use a Belkin wireless card in my PC, which works a treat and always has.

Remember to get the router into the master phone socket in the house, thats the first socket that gets the metalic pair once they come into your house, mines in the loft, which i great as it means the wireless signal covers all of the house. And dont forget to put a filter onto every phone socket that has a device on it, and I wouldnt suggest having more than 3 other devices plugged into your home phone system. (If youve got SKY pluged into the phones, dont forget to filter that too!)

Shouldnt really comment on an ISP really, wouldn't be impartial enough

However, Zen, Pipex, Nildram I have heard good things about. I use AOL.

 

[tim]

Thanks for the info so far.

Some background info: The house we live in is old and has thick stone walls. Its is long c 20m and the master box is in our bedroom at one end and the office is at the other end. Currently there is the standard phone cable run under the floors connecting this room to the master box. It isn't an option to replace this cable since iti was done before carpets were laid etc. For a wireless signal to make it from the master to the office, a signal wouldl have to travel through 4 walls (2 brick and 2 stud).

I know I am being ignorant but does a new box have to be put in (the one we currently have is newish - 4 years old). Would I be better running a new cable around the outside of the house and bringing it into the study? WIll the wireless signal make it that far or am I better running the router off the slave in the study?

We aren't that far from the exchange (c 1/2 mile) so i don't know what the long line criteria are.

I don't have a prob throwing money at the problems but if there are things that I could do to save labour costs like rerouting wiring then I would like to do so.

Sorry for not knowing enough about these things

Cheers

Tim

 

[Anonymous]

1/2 a mile is very close Tim. SO you 'shouldnt' have a problem with that side of things. Unless there are faults with the local cabling to your property.

The in house side of things sounds a tad more challenging, only by virtue of the fact that the cable under the floor you talked about, has been there a long time. But really that shouldnt cause you any issues. The wireless signals can have problems with thick stone walls, I have a pre war house and all the walls are stone (rather than stud) and the wireless can struggle in one room that has 3 walls to travel though, plus a suspended floor. I'm not really up on the wireless side of things, I presume its the same principles as a radio signal and radiates outwards in a circle from the source. Therefore I presume that buying some form of directional aerial could help if you have issues.

Long extensions from the master socket to the modem or router that is trying to get connection, only really come into play when you are on the border of being a long line, as the test would say, 'OK, you are on the edge, but we'll try for a connection' when you add another 20 meters of cable that might make the difference. All slightly theoretical as there are so many factors that can cause connection issues.

It sounds like you are close to the exchange, with only one run of cable to where you want the connection to be made. I wouldn't have 'thought' you would have a problem.

Best to order, you will have 14 days cooling off period once it arrives. If you have problems when it arrives, send me a message, only to happy to help.

AT LAST! A subject I can help other people on the forum with rather than constantly asking for help with my woodworking!!

 

[Chris Knight]

Tim,
Since you are so close to the exchange (I live close to an exchange but the one I am connected to is actually miles away so obvious proximity is sometimes misleading!) the signal to noise ratio should be very good which is a great place to start!

Ideally you should connect the router to where the line comes into the house (ie your first box) but I think it is not actually vital so you can probably run a wireless router from the connection in your study with no problem.

Wireless signals can be very variable even when the bits of kit don't move and depend on the weather amongst other things! It is very hard to predict. If you have a mate close by who can bring his router over (plus the wireless adapter for the PC and actually try it on your computer, that would be the best thing to know if you will have signal problems.

Others here seem better qualified to give more definitive answers so it's worth hanging on for another reply or two, or going to one of the many networking forums. Your new ISP will prbably have a reasonably knowledgable forum too.

 

[tim]

Big louie,

Thanks for your help. The cable under the floor has only been there c 4years. What I still don't understand is what of the existing setup ie master socket, cables and slave sockets actually need to be changed.

Cheers

Tim

 

[RogerS]

Tim

offers still open...I've go wireless routers/cards/normal routers, you name it. ...if you can tell me when you're going to be connected then i can bring the kit over and we can try things out.

Roger

 

[tim]

Thanks for everyone's help.

Roger, I will take up your offer if I may.

BB enable date is 15th but obviously its going to be a few days after that that it will be useable. BT have moved the availability date three times so far - 6th, 13th, 15th!

Cheers

Tim

 

[RogerS]

Tim

You'll need to place your order ahead of that date so that you get provisioned asap. Once you place the order they (your ISP) take care of everything else and monitor when the exchange actually gets enabled etc. (Well, that's the way Zen does it...I simply cannot fault them). You get told when your line will be up and running (at last you get told the day if not the hour )

Roger

 

[Anonymous]

4 years ago for the cable will be fine I am sure..

just make sure that once you get an email from your ISP to say that your line has been provisioned, that you get the box from them with the modem and all the filters.

When that arrives, stick a filter onto every piece of kit thats connected to your phone network etc.

If you are using the router, keep the modem safe for a back up.

You wont need to change any sockets at all, its all self-install, just filters then plug the router in.

You can get faults and they are difficult to predict, but rare. For example you might be in the footprint of a large radio mast, and because of that BT may have put an Radio frequency filter on your master socket to stop interference on your phone. this kills broadband, so it wont work from the start. They dont tell you, you just have to work it out. Thats why BT are SO great! NOT!

Its fairly straight forward and soudns like someone going to come round and help you out, youre lucky.

If you need anything jjust send me a message, i can find out what the problem is from here.