Home Networking

Hi folks,

I already have a sitecom 8 port (wired) hub that I picked up for 35 quid a couple of years back. It has been flaky at best, I am in the market for a new (home) networking alternative. My wifes laptop already has a wireless card fitted, I am tempted to buy a wireless router and a couple of wireless USB keys.... (I have four computers to network in total).

Can anyone recommend a particular brandname ? I am inclined to steer clear of sitecom, any advice appreciated.

Don't know how much you know about wireless networking, so excuse if this seems patronising.

I have a D-link one - set a couple of these up and they've all been pretty good. Same with Netgear wireless routers. The Netgear ones were notably easier to get up and running.

If you're planning a lot of PC to PC file transfers, then you should go for 108mbps hardware unless you're prepared to wait a lot longer for files to copy. If not, 54mbps will be fine. I have three PCs with 54mbps hardware and an 8mb ADSL connection and don't have any problems.

Should also ensure that your router and wireless adapters are preferably all the same brand for maximum compatibility. I found that Edimax wireless adapters don't really work that well with anything, so unless you can put up with the connection dropping every five minutes, get a better (more expensive) brand.

Even though your laptop has built-in WiFi, you might find that a cardbus or usb adapter performs significantly better, so look into this later if you have problems with it.

One more thing - security! Wireless routers rarely (if ever) come with security enabled. Its imperative that you tighten up security with WPA encryption (or at least WEP), plus MAC filtering and also switch off SSID broadcasting.

3Com. Particularly their OfficeConnect series DSL routers are both relatively inexpensive, reliable and easy to configure using the built-in web interface.

I would recommend aginst getting D-Link routers, as they are based on Cisco technology, and tend to provide a much more convoluted interface as well as a worse link.

If you're going to be doing a lot of PC to PC file transfers, get an USB stick. Also I wouldn't get a 108Mb router, because it isn't going to be standards compliant.

Yeah the interface is a little "WTF??" at first - I also found that a bug in the interface meant I wasn't able to set up MAC filtering using Firefox - had to use IE7 to do it. I can't really fault the connection quality though.

...unless any of your PCs only has USB1.1, because then it will be really slow as well.

And forget about networking if any of your PCs are still running win98. :/

thanks for the info.. I intend to order my new gear this wed in time for the weekend, my sitecom hub has resulted in enough folicle loss as it is.

Thanks for the security tips, I see where you are coming from. (;-) Anymore tips welcome, got to go and solve some inno setup mandrolic scripty blah now....

Incidentally, I am now gonna be scripting along to James: the best of (10 years ago vintage)...

I used to have an iMac and an iBook and we used an ethernet hub to do internet sharing, where the iMac was the server. This worked okay but it's not the fastest option. A hub transmits information to ALL computers that are connected to it, regardless of whether it's meant to go to them or not, and splits the available bandwidth between the 4. Obviously this is inefficent and cripples the speed. It did work okay for filesharing and sharing interent but could've been faster. A `switch` is more suitable than a hub since it makes full-speed specific connections to each computer, to send them only the data that applies to them, which saves a lot of bandwidth and makes the whole thing faster. Then from there you can move up to a router with a built in switch, since a router will offer you lots of other features like firewalls, wireless connections, security features, etc.

I just moved to a TrendNet TEW-452BRP Wireless router. It was $49.99 from CompUSA. It was a bit tricky to get it set up on a Mac and we had to call customer service, but eventually it worked fine. We have one computer connected to one of its 4 10/100 ports, by wire, and then will have another computer connect via wireless. It has a built in switch and can do filesharing and all that. If you only have four computers this router would probably be good enough, and if you make all your systems wireless you should have no problem. Only thing to bear in mind is you probably need at least one wire, temporarily, to do admin/config changes to the router.

D-Link - ive had total problems with mine where it keeps dropping its connecion with the provider, but may have just been a bad apple.

Get a netgear or 3com wireless router, it is a hardware NAT firewall and gives up to 4 wired ports like a hub and up to mabe 3-4 wireless.

But whatever you do dont do belkin! theyre horrible things

Can't really recommend a brand, but I can recommend a supplier. After much searching I recently purchased a wireless router/modem at a very reasonable price from http://www.digidave.co.uk/index.php?cPath=29&osCsid=e90ac600d4f8cd49979d031221da3579
its worth taking a look.

thanks all, lots of good advice, only 40 odd hours until I order my networking nirvana...

I haven't bothered. Nothing bad happened.

29 hours till I order my networky bits....