Best broadband provider to use wireless?

stars_bright

I have just cancelled BT broadband using their homehub wirelessly, because the connection kept dropping off. We tried placing the home hub in 3 different places and changed the channel several times to no avail. After 5 months and countless calls to BTs helpdesk they agreed to allow us to cancel our contract (which had been for 18 months) and they are refunding all our charges since we signed up. We know it is not a problem with our PCs because we have never had a problem connecting to next doors wireless internet. Now we are looking for new broadband and we are very anxious not to repeat the same problem. We did sign up for Skys phone, broadband and TV package for £20 but after signing up they phoned and said that the broadband would be an extra £18 due to where we livew so we cancelled that. I am just worried that there is some problem with our phone line and that is what was caauing all our problems with BT (BT said they had checked the line but there must be some reason why it wasn't working).
To avoid any possible problem with the phone line we are thinking of going to Virgin on cable. The question is - can you plug a wireless router into the modem that Virgin supply when they connect you? One thing I liked about the Sky offer was that they supplied a wireless router for free!
Any advice re the best way forwatd for trouble free wireless broadband would be much appreciated

BarGin

I would say that Virgin Cable is definitely the most reliable broadband service. The wireless part would be down to the quality of your router, your settings and/or any other local wireless interference. You might be able to blag a free wireless router when you order. I'm using a Belkin wireless router plugged into my Virgin Media modem and it works fine all over the house.

BarGin

cledor

There are plenty of wireless routers which connect to cable modems, just make sure you get what is called "DSL" router, instead of "ADSL" . Router prices start at £30. Make sure it's a "G" router to connect to your existing equipment which is likely to be G standard.

stuartjp_2

i have virgin with a d-link router works fine upto 100 feet from my house,
my girl plays her ds with 3 of her friends on my broadband and i still play online games "slightly higher ping but still great"

stars_bright

Thanks for the info, we have decided to go for Virgin, seems that people who have it are happy with it and next door don't seem to have any problems with it

stars_bright

We still have the BT Home Hub - could we use this as the wireless router?

espresso

stars_bright wrote: »

We still have the BT Home Hub - could we use this as the wireless router?

No, it will be locked to only connect to BT, a bit like mobiles are locked to their network provider.

albertross_2

difficult to say for sure, but I suspect your problem may have just been the homehub, so a new router may have solved it, rather than moving to cable.

Have you cancelled the BT phone line?

stars_bright

No, we are keeping the BT phone line. We tried 2 different home hubs as we thought the problem wsa with the home hub, but we had problems with both of them. We still haven't bought the wireless router though - there are some for sale on the Virgin Media website also. Aren't there different speeds also? what speed would you recommend?

cledor

stars_bright wrote: »

No, we are keeping the BT phone line. We tried 2 different home hubs as we thought the problem wsa with the home hub, but we had problems with both of them. We still haven't bought the wireless router though - there are some for sale on the Virgin Media website also. Aren't there different speeds also? what speed would you recommend?

The most common speed is 54mbps, that is available on the standard 802.11.g routers, which is the most commonly available type.

Pls note this is not your internet connection speed, this is normally much lower at around 8mbps maximum. The 54mbps is only the wireless LAN speed.

jampton

I have virgin cable + linksys wireless router and I have had no problems