New House

[simonskippy]

I know some of you on here are pretty hot on the IT front, those of you that know me are aware that I have just bought a new house, I am having the thing gutted as we speak, i'm also keen for a communications co to come in and sort the place out, so do I go for Broadband if so which one also is it worth getting them to make the whole place wireless? IS wireless tech any good?

Si

[Brettster]

Hi Simon

Im on NTL Broadband after having been on BT for 2 years

NTL offer a 1meg connection for only £5.00 more than BT and there seems to be alot less downtime on NTL than BT

I also have it connected to a Netgear 614 net router and a net gear wireless access point connected to that

and it works perfectly well in any part of the house even outside in the garden or half way down the street, sending data from one computer to another is a little slow compared to a cable but the net and anything to do with it is great on my wireless notebook

also as cable is ethernet its alot easier to set up with routers etc than the standard USB modem you get from BT, also use's alot less resources on your pc than the USB setup

Brett

[NigeSt]

Wireless access is brilliant - do it! ...just make sure you restrict access to avoid WAR chalkers :)

Then, sit in the garden, with a beer, and check out the latest on the LOC - sorted! :)

Nige

[Steve]

sit in the bath as well.. but please do not dunk the lappy in the water! makes a sizzling sound! :D

Si needs super charged internet access!

[ricky_is200]

Yep, never had any problems with my Belkin wireless router and I also have the NTL 1MB service which is very reliable (despite all the bad things you hear about NTL).

[james2210]

You can't beat a bit of CAT5 cable. If you are gutting the house, you might as well lay some CAT5 and some co-ax into all the rooms. Call me sad, but I've pretty much CAT5'd my house. It was pretty tough concealing all the wires, but I didn't have the benefit of having an empty house. Everything is wired back to a 10/100Mbit switch/router in the loft.

A box of CAT5 (305 metres) was enough to do my whole house out for LAN and phones and only cost £27. My friends all thought I was mad and made fun of me, my wife couldn't see the point, but now it's done, they are all eating humble pie as I happily listen to the MP3 files from my PC upstairs, on my stereo downstairs.

CAT5 can also be used for phone outlets, so if you don't want network points just yet, you can always use them as phone points.

Benefits over wireless are firstly speed-upto 1000Mbit compared to usually 11Mbit over wireless, and secondly security. Last thing you want is some wise guy outside with his/her laptop sponging your bandwidth, snooping your bank account details, or printing swear words on your printer!

Also, if you do decide to go wireless, you could plug a wireless adaptor into any of the sockets then surf in your garden or on the sofa. Some of the wireless base stations interfere with TV aerials, so make sure yours is positioned a nice distance from aerials or TV's if you decide not to go down the cable route.

[Wallace]

I have BT ADSL with a USB modem, so what do i need for wireless comms, i.e. using the net on a different machine? What are the security implications, can anyone else get onto a wireless network.

[simonskippy]

Finally sorted out the painters decorators - funnily enough the contractor that I went with turned up in an IS200 to do the quote!! Thought that man has class and style i'll use him!!

I can't get BT broadband and NTL is not available in my area HELP what to do instead?

[Wallace]

Sounds like you will have to wait Si, until your exchange is enabled (dont ask when- I only work for them). In the mean-time you could sign your decorator up to the club :D

[simonskippy]

In the mean-time you could sign your decorator up to the club :D

Gave him one of the LOC business cards and told him to get on here!!

[yoshi]

I have the same problem - no cable and no ADSL from BT

I use ISDN, this is much better than regular phone line as it's v.quick dial-up, connection doesn't break as easy and it gives multiple phone lines. It is about 30% faster than a 56K modem.

I recommend CAT5 cable as it gives 100mbps speed, much quicker than wireless. Wireless is OK for checking your email in the garden but for true reliable speed you need CAT 5 cable.

You can buy CAT5 cable already made up to 25M etc. I run all my cables over-head and behind the skirting boards, have got av and speakers all wired this way also.

[Brettster]

Bt offer Satalite access now but it's far from cheap

and another company offers a 2meg download from sat for 25 quid a month but you need to pay a 600 quid setup fee and still use a dial up modem to request sites etc

(bt's is 2 way sat)

there is also tele2.co.uk but i dont know much about them

[ricky_is200]

I recommend CAT5 cable as it gives 100mbps speed, much quicker than wireless. Wireless is OK for checking your email in the garden but for true reliable speed you need CAT 5 cable.

As even the fastest broadband is only 1mbps your not going to notice the difference web surfing or downloading files. The only other thing I do across my home network is printing I don't see any benefit to running cables around the house.

Its so convenient to be able to use the laptop anywhere in the house.

[james2210]

IMHO

Cable good-fast, cheap, reliable, secure

Wireless bad-slow, expensive, less reliable, if not setup correctly the whole street will be reading your emails!

Also some things to consider...

In X years time when your 2 next door neighbours, the person across the road and the person who lives at the bottom of your garden have wireless, is there going to be any interferance?

If you were selling your house and it was already completely wired for sound, audio and network, it would surely be a great selling point and therefore worth the investment.

[ricky_is200]

I know I'm a wireless fan, but I have to say I find my wireless network totally reliable, and surfing/downloading is no slower than on my desktop which is hard wired to my cable modem router.

I've setup 128bit encryption and MAC address filtering to ensure no-one else can hook in.

[simonskippy]

Bt offer Satalite access now but it's far from cheap

and another company offers a 2meg download from sat for 25 quid a month but you need to pay a 600 quid setup fee and still use a dial up modem to request sites etc

(bt's is 2 way sat)

there is also tele2.co.uk but i dont know much about them

I've finally taken the plunge and booked in Satelitte Broadband, a 2mb download pipe will be added in to the house asap, it is a new dish thing?!?!? that I can also get Sky Digital on - Result getting fitted on 22nd April.

Should be able to access the net a bit quicker then!!

[Matthew_McNally]

I've setup 128bit encryption and MAC address filtering to ensure no-one else can hook in.

wanna bet

don't worry too much about securing the pipe - secure the disks.

remove all the default shares and access, and only allow access to defined users.

WEP encryption can be broken in about 15 minutes (airsnort only needs about a sample of about 2 million packets)

your MAC address is broadcast in every packet, in plain text - any packet sniffer can grab that in a jiffy.

make sure you machines are secure - that is the main thing

[ricky_is200]

Thanks Matt, I'll double check everything inc the share permissions.

[djanderso]

Surely, if a personal firewall is installed that will stop unathorised access over wireless?

[Matthew_McNally]

Surely, if a personal firewall is installed that will stop unathorised access over wireless?

depends on the settings, and the firewall.

Once you are on the WLAN, then you will have an IP address within your network (normally 192.168.123.nnn).

If you firewall is configured to allow traffic within this trusted range to access machines - then no - a firewall won't stop unauthorised access.

I have access to some materials on wireless security - if there is enough demand, then I could prepare a high level paper, in laymens terms ( :D ), of the steps you can take to secure your wireless LAN

[TonyGoose]

I've setup 128bit encryption and MAC address filtering to ensure no-one else can hook in.

wanna bet

don't worry too much about securing the pipe - secure the disks.

WEP encryption can be broken in about 15 minutes (airsnort only needs about a sample of about 2 million packets)

your MAC address is broadcast in every packet, in plain text - any packet sniffer can grab that in a jiffy.

Frequency hopping spread spectrum might help.

If you can afford it :))

[djanderso]

Frequency hopping spread spectrum might help.

Oh-err!

[Fever]

Yep I agree with TonyGoose

[javaboss]

I'm on BT Openworld with a SpeedTouch 570 ADSL wireless router. It's cool - and plenty fast enough unless I'm copying very large files between the two laptops that we use on the network.

I configured the WEP encryption and changed the SSID.

Somehow, I don't think the old dear that lives next door to me will be sniffing my packets! :D

[Fidgits]

Be careful with wireless... make sure you have a firewall running on all of your systems connected.

The best way to combine ADSL and wireless is a box from BT.. it will connect to any ethernet ADSL router , and transmit automously (no need for a server PC).

On the down side, I have had ADSL for a year, and it has screwed up my normal phone line, i get loads of static whenever I make a call and the DSL router is switched on...