My house right now has an Earthlink Home Networking set up that uses the existing phone lines to provide the DSL connections. The primary computer, mine, hooks up through the Ethernet port, but the other two computers in the house, both PCs, connect via USB network adapters.
The results are not that impressive. The speeds pale in comparison to my friend’s cable modem, and the two PCs constantly see their connections stall while Internet Explorer gives them a cryptic “detecting proxy settings” message. Meanwhile, it sounds like Earthlink doesn’t even support this setup anymore (we’ve had it nearly 2 years now).
So we’re looking for something new (and cheaper, if possible. We pay $60/month right now.) Here are the stipulations:
We need to support two PCs and one Mac.
The house is a rental, so we can’t run wires through walls
One of the computers is on a totally different floor, even without going through walls, wires won’t help much there.
As for going wireless… it’s an old house. (Pre-WWII, I would guess). Will this present any transmission problems if we went wireless?
As far as I know our only options are Earthlink and Verizon, since we live in Washington DC. If anyone knows any other providers, please let me know.
If we went wireless, what would our equipment costs be?
So, that’s it. Any insights beyond what I said above would also be useful. Thanks for any help!
You already sound like you decided to go wireless. The major decision is the b standard or the newer g standard. If you are transfering files between computers or setting up servers, get g. If not, b will work great for you and is cheaper.
*** We need to support two PCs and one Mac.**
first buy a wireless router. modem goes to router and computers connect to router.
*** As for going wireless… it’s an old house. (Pre-WWII, I would guess). Will this present any transmission problems if we went wireless?**
I’ve only had a problem with brick walls/chimneys affecting wireless connections. You just have to place your router in the most optimal of places. I recommend wireless. Easiest way when comps are on differnt floors.
*** If we went wireless, what would our equipment costs be?**
$40-$60 for router (preferably with built-in switch. Helps when you are using 2 or more comps at same time.)
pci wireless card - $45
for g standard add $20 to the router and $10 to the pci card
I never did like those USB adaptors. I guess they are easy to install and that must be the attraction. I just setup a wireless router here and it works pretty well, you may have some signal strength problems depending on placement of the router. My router claims a distance of 100 meters inside. The router also has a printer port so when you attach a printer any machine can print easily without printer sharing through a PC. This is a nice feature.
I have also heard that some wireless cards are better than others, in particular Orinoco cards. 801B router are pretty cheap these days and mine works very well for Internent surfing, it is more than adequate for that. Make sure you read up on making the connection more secure and don’t use the default settiings of the router.
As for wireless range, figure that the signal can get through 2 walls or 1 floor fairly easily, in most cases. Then figure out if you have a place to put the router so that it’ll reach all computers…Also realize that with PCI wireless cards, they usually (stupidly, IMHO) have the antennae on the back of the computer. Realize that your computer’s case can do a very good job of blocking wireless signals.
Alright, so after looking things over, I think this is what I have to do:
• Get basic DSL service from whoever (probably Verizon).
• Connect wireless router to DSL modem.
• Connect router to all three computers by cable or wireless.
If I’ve got this wrong, please tell me.
Two of the computers are close enough to eachother to use regular ethernet cables connected to the router. The third one, downstairs, would need a wireless card put in. My room is right above where this third computer is, so I assume transmission wouldn’t be an issue.
Does anyone have any brand recommendations for wireless routers/PCI cards (I don’t want to use a wireless USB adapter)?
Also, should I go with the B or G standard? We’d just be using it for e-mail, web browsing, IM, and other normal stuff, so I think B would be good enough. Finally, since my iMac would connect to the router by ethernet cable, I assume in that case it wouldn’t matter which standard I use. Is that correct?
We use a Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless B router with a four-port switch. My computer is hardwired to it. My roommates both use laptops so instead on wireless cards they both have Linksys wireless USB network adaptors. We got a bigger rebate because we bought an all-Linksys setup; we’re very happy with it. This was the first network I’ve set up and it took me all of ten minutes (including unwrapping the router and adaptors and installing the software on all three computers AND configuring the router). One roommate did have a little trouble with the adaptor and Linksys’ tech support line really helped him out (at something like 10:30 pm).
The transfer rate using the adaptors is equivalent to the rate I get being hardwired to the router, as far as I can tell.
Determine what the correct wireless network standard is for each computer in your network. For example, older G3-based iMacs require only the B standard. For this you would need a plain Airport card. Newer G4 models require the Airport Extreme card which follows the G standard. The deal is that a mixed network of B and G machines always drops down to B speeds, so you may be wasting money on G gear.
If one of your boxes can run G, then make that the wireless enabled box.
Really? Huh, well that’s good to know for the future. It’s a moot point here though, cause we’ve decided to go with the B standard. We really have no need for the speeds G would bring us. I ordered the equipment last night and we’re calling our present and future DSL providers today to switch services.
Has anyone ever cancelled service with Earthlink before? Do they do it instantaneously, or is there lag time? We’d like to keep to a bare minimum the amount of time we’re without internet access here, and I’d expect that Verizon would make us wait at least a few days before they can come out and do… whatever it is they do.
I’ve been reading about these as a possibility (along with power companies as ISPs through the grid) for many years, but this is the first time I’ve seen them on sale. They are only 14Mbps, but that is much faster than broadband, so connection sharing across them shouldn’t be an issue.
…although I do wonder if they would work in my office (which has structured cabling anyway, so the point is moot) - different parts of the office are supplied by different phases of the three-phase mains power, presumably the three phases are isolated from one another…
Does anyone have experience of power line networking?
I have a Netgear MR814 which provides wireless b and 4 wired ports.
Getting that type of base/router might save you 1 wireless card if the dsl connection is close to one of your PC’s, you could use an ethernet card or connection and cable on that machine. The netgear has worked well, and has a browser interface for administration.
One suggestion: try to stick to the same brand of router/wireless station and adapters if possible. That helps you avoid any finger-pointing from the tech support of the router vs the tech support of the card. I got a Dell Truemobile
1300 card w/ a new laptop, then found out that it was not compatable with my Netgear base, and had trouble with other vendors products also. Netgear support was helpful but ended up pointing the finger at Dell. Rather than fuss with that, I bought a Netgear PC card and Dell sent the FedEx guy to my house to pick up the card on the 30 day no-questions-asked return.
While it is true that they cannot use Apple’s Airport Extreme cards, they may be able to use some other 802.11g adapter.
For example, I use a Linksys 802.11g CardBus adapter in my bronze keyboard PowerBook G3. It works quite well.
For desktop models, a 802.11g PCI card may work. I haven’t researched this myself. A little Google action should hopefully find you something. Or just buy one from somewhere with a no-hassle return policy and try it out.
To my knowledge, the only requirements for using a 3rd-party 802.11g card in a Mac is that you must use Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later, and the card must use the Broadcom chipset.
Even though 802.11g’s 54 Mb/s vs. b’s 11 Mb/s will mean nothing in terms of internet access, it you are trading files between your machines you’ll appreciate having g’s inceased bandwidth.
Hey jdc, I got the same router as you. I also got a Netgear USB adapter for the one computer that can’t be hardwired into the network, to avoid the exact kind of problem you talked about.
A question for Mac users: The router’s manual tells me to disable any software that logs me onto the network. I know my computer does this at startup, but I have no clue how to turn it off. Any ideas?