Hello all,
I’m currently the most tech-savvy person in a household with my parents and younger brother. We have three computers in three separate rooms, two phone lines (one of which is in my room only, and pretty much only used for dialing onto the internet), and two AOL accounts (one for my brother only, and one for my mother and I to share). My parents couldn’t really care less what the set-up is, but I find this grossly inefficient and unnecessarily expensive, when broadband access is cheaper than ever.
I’ve looked at the bills and made a few calls, and it looks like we can save close to $600 a year by switching to BellSouth DSL Internet access and dropping the second phone line and both AOL accounts. There shouldn’t be anything else to say, but my mother is dead-set against having any workmen or tech support people come to the house. She is extremely paranoid after we were burglarized a few years ago. However, after talking to BellSouth on the phone, they made it seem like they mail us the hardware and software to get started, plus instructions, and we can do everything ourselves.
What concerns me is getting all three of our computers to be able to use the DSL connection at once, essentially so we can all be on the Internet at once. I am pretty sure this is possible with networking, although I have no experience doing that. From what I understand, I would need to buy something called a wireless router to create a network between the three computers, since it’s impossible to use wires across our entire house. Then would I need to also purchase three network cards, or wireless ethernet cards, or what? How much would I be looking at spending for that (beyond the regular BellSouth charges), and can anyone recommend specific brands or models? We all have PCs, two of which run Windows ME and the other runs Windows 98.
To sum it up, if we drop the AOL accounts and the second phone line and switch to BellSouth, it will be a lot cheaper, and the service will be a lot better. I just want to be sure I can link up the three computers so we can all be online at all times, all together, and how simple this is to do. Also, I’ve heard the security for a wireless router is very poor, so would be need to get a firewall, or something else to protect us?
ANY advice would be most appreciated! You can see I’m our family’s best hope, and I’m woefully inexperienced with such things.