Wireless router and adaptor cards

Francophile

Hope this is the right palce to ask this. I rang Tiscali and they couldn't help and my husband queued for nearly an hour in Curry's and couldn't get to speak to anyone so I hope you don't mind me asking this. We have a Dell PC and 2 laptops, 1 Dell and 1 Advent. We have broadband with Tiscali and would like to use a router so that the laptops can access the internet as well. We know we need a router but does it matter what type? Also I take it we need wireless adaptor cards for all 3 computers and does each card have to be the brand of the PC/laptop or will any card do any PC/laptop? Is there anything else needed or anything else we need to consider? We're obviously not very technical so sorry if this sounds basic but we really haven't a clue
Many thanks in advance.

albertross_2

Any brand will work, it just needs to be adsl, not cable/dsl, ( adsl wireless router e.g. netgear dg834G), if the Dell PC is near the existing phone point, then you can use it wired to the network port, if the laptops have wireless built-in, that's all you need.

http://www.ebuyer.com/search/?qfind=dg834G&x=0&y=0

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=2471441&postcount=39

Curry's can be expensive

Francophile

Many thanks for your quick response albertross. The PC is near the existing phone point and the laptops are wireless enabled. Does this mean we don't need the adaptor card, just the router?

albertross_2

Yes, just the wireless router, they have 4 wired ports, so you just plug the pc in wired with the supplied cable, make sure it is an adsl model though, for use with BT lines, and make sure you encrypt it with wpa-psk\tkip when you get it.

Francophile

albertross wrote: »

and make sure you encrypt it with wpa-psk\tkip when you get it.

Could I have the plain English version of this please, I haven't one clue what it means.
Thank you for your patience albertross

coolhandjase

albertross is talking about wireless security for your connection to the internet. This will be explained with the documentation that comes with the router. The Netgear DG834G OR DG834GT are both good routers and would be suffcient for your needs....

ollyk

Let me just repeat what Albertross has just suggested with security as it can't be stressed enough! I am amazed walking down the road and seeing the amount of open networks there are with no encryption so you need to use the strongest encryption available, disable SSID and UPnP (I believe hackers can circumvent hardware routers using this vulnerability?) etc and also keep your software firewall as your router will not stop information being sent from your PC! Most of all read up on WiFi security as I am doing at the moment

free4440273

^I had no idea about the importance of disabling UPnP (I have indeed disabled SSID broadcast): does disabling UPnP prevent use of file-sharing such as Azureus?? Thanks

ollyk

free4440273 wrote: »

^I had no idea about the importance of disabling UPnP (I have indeed disabled SSID broadcast): does disabling UPnP prevent use of file-sharing such as Azureus?? Thanks

well I haven't tried any torrent software yet since discovering this but I would have thought manually port forwarding should be adequate?

ollyk

Just started uTorrent and all seems fine

free4440273

^Looks like i'll be disabling UPnP