which router ?

fishing-girl

I am not a techie so please dont laugh at my technical jargon..

i have just bought a new wireless laptop and also have a desktop pc.
I have broadband via cable (telewest ) through a motorola surfboard SB5100i modem. this is currently connected to the pc via a cable with large "telephone type" connectors. the modem also has a USB port which is not in use.

my questions are
1)what router do i need , any reccomendations?

2)can i leave my pc as it is currenly set up to the modem ( with new router). or do i need to buy a wireless receiver for it.
thanks for any help

oldrimes

Your pc is connected to the modem by an ethernet cable (looks a bit like a telephone connector). You can network by ethernet or USB, but in my experience ethernet is better.

You need a wireless router (works both for wired connections and wireless). There are several standards 802.11b is old and slow, 802.11g is fast - so look for this.

Best to buy a good brand name, with uk telephone support! I've got a Linksys one, which came with fairly straight forward instructions, but I've used NetGear which was also good. The instructions that came with the Linksys were better, but there were good instructions for NetGear - you just had to print the instructions off of the CD that came with the NetGear one.

You need to connect the router direct to the modem, and then the router to your pc (all wired) - this means that if you switch off your pc you still have wireless access from your laptop to your router. The next step is to configure it all - so you need to follow the instructions with the router.

Something else that is also worthwhile considering when selecting a wireless router, is whether you'd like voip (voice over internet protocol) to be included. There are various telephone services which are cheap and run over the internet (voip - do a web search for more info). Routers often come with a telephone connection for this purpose.

Timmy

I use Netgear which I'm very impressed with and have also heard good reports about Linskys which PC world were recently doing a good deal on. My mum has a Belkin which seems to work fine but I think people generally feel Linskys and Netgear are the ones to go for.

Stephen_Webber

Linksys are basically Cisco, whose routers run most of the internet. I've never used them, so I can't vouch for them. I had a Netgear cable modem router which was great and a Netgear ADSL modem which was dire. My current Belkin router is fantastic (albeit ADSL - it replaced the Netgear DG834G).

Cheers,
Stephen

Timmy

What was wrong with your Netgear? I had a DG834G before upgrading to a DG834GT and had no problems at all with it.

banger9365

you can us a cable belkin router too been using for 12 month and works great on 10mb (telewest)broadband
and it's cheep at PC WORLD £44.99 >HERE<
or £43.97 collect @store
All you have to do is follow the set up cd that come's with it ,it shows you what to do and it do's show you ,plus it sets it up for you too and set's the wifi up too if i rememder right
it runs two desktops and a lapptop and my wifi mobile phone (spv m600)

Stephen_Webber

Timmy wrote:

What was wrong with your Netgear? I had a DG834G before upgrading to a DG834GT and had no problems at all with it.

It used to constantly drop its internet connection. I ended up with no internet access and had to power cycle it to get back online.

Stephen

rallymad

I have just got a Linksys WRT54GS which I would reccommend.

Bought a WRT54G from novatech for £52 but the files on it were corrupted and couldn't update them, so back it went. PC World has the next version of it (with speedboost... woo!) PLUS a wireless adapter for my PC for £49.99 so bought that. Hasn't missed a beat at all but currently reading more into wireless security which I would advise you to read a bit about whatever wireless product you get.

viru.doshi

My old netgear decided to die one day - no reason, no warning.

Have a d-link now, which is ok though if i had the choice i'd buy a linksys for home use.

Netgear is great if it works, when it doesnt its a right ol' pain to get it working!

wolfman

Stephen_Webber wrote:

It used to constantly drop its internet connection. I ended up with no internet access and had to power cycle it to get back online.

Can be quite a common problem with the Netgear DG834xx range. As far as I can see it's firmware related. My DG834GT has been great since the v1.02 firmware release, but before that there were months of frustration and tweaking trying to make it stable. Definitely tainted my opinion of Netgear, but at the moment I'm happy with my DG834GT.

wiraone

Stephen_Webber wrote:

Linksys are basically Cisco, whose routers run most of the internet. I've never used them, so I can't vouch for them. I had a Netgear cable modem router which was great and a Netgear ADSL modem which was dire. My current Belkin router is fantastic (albeit ADSL - it replaced the Netgear DG834G).

Cheers,
Stephen

Linksys is Cisco subsidary, but surely, since Linksys gears are sold to general consumers instead of commercials, the gears don't have the same quality as the Cisco ones. One of the reason why there're many third party firmwares is actually due to the Linksys's slowness in responding to fixing the problems in their firmwares.

Anyway, I'm one of many Linksys WRT54GS owners .. and thanks to HyperWRT developer, I've got a pretty good setup too.