Wireless

[bigbaddom]

Hi,
I was hoping for some help,
I'm trying to set up wireless in my house, quite big 4 stories victorian.
I currently have a motorola sb4100 cable modem, I was wondering if this can be used with the netgear stuff to create a wireless network, ie does it have a Ethernet port or RJ-45.
I've looked, and the only free port I can see says "Link act 100".

1 more question on the netgear site it tried to sell me a device for my laptop. If my laptop has wireless built in, I shouldnt need it. should I?


thanks for all the help

[Wildfire]

Do you mean the Netgear Power Line stuff or the Netgear Rangemax?

[puggit]

You might struggle with a 4 storey Victorian house to get a signal everywhere - they don't make houses like they used to!

[bogie]

you just need a router without cable modem

I would get a Rangemax jobbie WPN824

you dont need anything for your laptop if its built in

depending on which floor of the house the modem and router will be on, you may need a powerline range extender kit like th WGXB102 to reach the top or bottom floor

[bigbaddom]

my main question was does the motorola sb4100 cable modem have an Ethernet port.
Well the modem is on the first floor. was hoping to get it everywhere...
I looked on netgear and was thinking of the WNR834B.
our broadband is 4 mb at the moment, although as the whole family has now got laptops and things they want to connect (up to 5 a time) we were thinking of going for the 10 mb soon.
Any advice on the router?

Thanks for all the replies so far

[bogie]

yes that cable modem does have an ethernet port

that router is a good choice if you need the higher bandwidth for mulitple users - you will need the draft N adapters to get the best out of it though

I think you will still need a pair of powerline extenders to get to the very top floor at a good speed (depending on house construction/other sources of interference) - best try it out and see first though...you may get lucky

[pdV6]

bigbaddom said:

our broadband is 4 mb at the moment, although as the whole family has now got laptops and things they want to connect (up to 5 a time) we were thinking of going for the 10 mb soon.

Well, that's 4Mb shared 5 ways at worst = 400kb/sec each. I doubt there's many sites that you're downloading large files from that can shove it at you that fast. Even if there were, all 5 of you would have to be doing the same load at once to dent it, so 10mb is probably overkill.

[ThePassenger]

bigbaddom said:

I've looked, and the only free port I can see says "Link act 100".

Link, ACTivity, 100Mbps Link Yep that's a pretty standard Ethernet port.

Pick up a Wireless Router, a Netgear RANGEMAX branded unit (If you are on Cable don't but an ADSL unit) should do, they often bundle them with laptop add-on cards, handy, but if yours does have it built in then keep the add-on card for any new machines that appear or if your internal one craps out.

Bolt the two together with a length of cat5 cable (check the respective manuals to see if it requires cross-over or patch configuration). Then work through the manual on the netgear to configure it.

The better the construction of the house... the more limited the range will be; however the router might well have detachable antennas fitted and you can get a 'better' one or, alternatively, buy a vanilla AP and set that as a repeater (although if you get RANGEMAX this will need to be from the same).

[bigbaddom]

Thanks for your help everyone.
I will give it a go, and if all goes horribly wrong I will be back to bother you all.

Cheers
Dom