Cheapest possible wireless and USB internet access

StockportGerbil

Hi!
My son is renting a room in a house where the owners have a broadband connection. He initially said / was told there was wireless access that he was welcome to use. Subsequent investigation revealed that the internet connection is provided by telewest to and is via a cable modem with no wireless, but with usb and ethernet outputs and his landlords use the USB connection.

I've been asked to sort out internet access for him. :-(

The problems / constraints I've got are :-

- Cost (needs to be as cheap as possible, although I've got a spare D-Link 802.11g PCI card my son can have and / or a wired Netgear router / switch.)

- I do not want to muck around with anyone's computer other than my sons

- Distance (the modem is at the front of the house and sons room is at the back with another bedroom, kitchen and bathroom in between), so running a wire isn't practical. Will wireless manage?

- Distance between me and him / lack of technical expertise 'on the ground' - I'm in Stockport / Lee is in Tottenham and tech support is hard enough over the phone, so at the moment I am trying to find out if the landlord's PC has an RJ45 ethernet network connection.

I guess the telewest cable modem won't be impressed abut using the ethernet and usb connections simultaneously? Assuming the landlords PC does have ethernet is getting a cheap 802.11B router / switch off ebay an option? Is 802.11g backwards compatable with 802.11b and will the signals go the distance? Are telewest connections locked to particular MAC addresses?

Thanks

Kevin

Soulistic

Hi mate,

That's quite some predicament you got. But, here are my views.

I would suggest you get your son a wireless router with a USB dongle included. I picked up this set from ebuyer at a price of £50.

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=14860472922&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=81812

And here's a another one that's a little cheaper:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=14860465762&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=96755

This should solve your first two problems... it's not that much of a cost, and after he's done with it, you can upgrade yours to this wirelss router. Also, the landlord doesn't have to worry about setting up their computer to be used with this router.

The part about whether telewest will allow usb and ethernet connections... well, they actually suggested it to me one time as a solution to a problem I was having. So, I don't htink that should be a problem really.

As far as I know, 802.11g is backwards compatible with 802.11b, but somebody might want to confirm this. And it should go the distance.

Telewest do not lock to mac addresses anymore. They used to, and so, we had to call them to tell them we are switching from USB to Ethernet connection, but, now, we interchange the whenever we like.

I hope that helps. Please let us know how you get along!

decanay

802.11g is backwards compatible with 802.11b, but the b has a far lesser range. With the b I can usually get a signal about 10-20 meters, with the g it almost doubles.

tigermatt

The 802.11g is much faster (54Mbps) than 802.11b which is slower (11Mbps). 802.11b doesn't support as many simultaneous users, although this shouldn't be a problem for you if it is just one or two computers using the connection at any one time. (This is the signal from the router/Wireless Access Point to the computer and not the internet connection)

Here is a good site: http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wireless80211/a/aa80211standard.htm