Interesting UNI house situation

[boYce]

Hi all, Just moved into my new uni house with 5 other mates and we really need to sort the internet out. The house is rented from "ClubEasy" and all bills are included. At the moment we have a 1MB connection (which is really about 600k when tested and often worse) to share between all 6 of us. Each of the rooms have a network and phone socket in them which are connected to a router in the hall. This has been installed and run by Kingston communication, so we dont have a BT land-line connected to the house at the moment. If we wanted pipex or BT broadband we would first need to set up and pay line rental on the BT line and then pay for the broadband on top. From what i have heard the BT lines are not very good around here so even if we did do that we would only be getting a maximum of about 2MB for this postcode (LE11 5ED). We could get NTL 10MB but that is £35 a month, would have to be a 12 month contract and we would then need to set-up wireless throughout the house. unless we can get into the locked Kingston router and connect the NTL into that so it would use the sockets that are already wired to the rooms.

What do you guys think is the best solution to the problem?

 

[Phemo]

You can get a 9 month student contract with NTL. I'm not sure how you go about doing this but someone else will be able to advise.

You would need to get a new router for NTL, but you say that the existing ethernet ports in each room are plugged into the existing router - can't you just unplug them from that and then plug them into a new one? Or did you mean it's actually locked away so you can't physically access it or something?

Most routers tend to only have 4 ports, but if there's 6 of you, is it not plugged into a hub or switch first?

 

[Phil99]

Can you actually physically get to the router or is it just locked out via the admin pages?

On BT MaxDSL, for your postcode:

According to BT Wholesale, your line should be able to support a 6Mbps or greater ADSL connection via ADSL Max.

Though that's obviously not set in stone & if you know the lines round your area are pretty dodgy it's not worth bothering with if you can get cable really.

In your area you can get Bulldogy LLU so it might be worth looking in to a fully unbundled service if they do one, but of course that's still relying on the physical BT lines.

NTL does seem to be the 'net connection of choice for students and 10Mbps for £7 a month each isn't really that bad IMO. Could always go with the 4Mbps option at £24.99 a month (fiver a month each) if you don't need the full 10Mbps.

edit: If the router is locked away, just plug the new router in to one of the existing network points and use the kingston router as a switch only

 

[boYce]

edit: If the router is locked away, just plug the new router in to one of the existing network points and use the kingston router as a switch only

Thanks for the help guys.
yes the router is locked away in a slim metal locker, attatched to the wall in the hall that we do not have the key for.

I can not see/connect to the other 5 computers connected to the router so at the moment we cant share files between the house.

So it seems like NTL is the way to go how would i go about setting up the router to be a switch, i wouldnt have a clue how to do that. It would be really good if we could do this as it would saves us a lot of extra costs and mean that we can use the nice room ports.

or do i need to brush up on my lock picking skills?

If i plug the NTL into the network socket in eg. room 1 how would i get the internet back into the computer in that room?

also if i am using the router as a switch is the net going to be the same speed in all the rooms?

 

[boYce]

You can get a 9 month student contract with NTL. I'm not sure how you go about doing this but someone else will be able to advise.

When i spoke to NTL they said they only do 12 month contracts. I dont really trust what they say as they come across as good salesmen looking for the most they can out of you if you dont push them...

 

[Phemo]

Someone else is bound to post about the 9 month thing eventually

As for Phil99's suggestion, that's a good idea. You could simply have the NTL modem and a cable router in one room plugged into the ethernet port there. The only problem with this is that you wouldn't be able to use DHCP (assuming the other router has it enabled) so you would have to assign static IPs to each PC but it'd work fine.

Let's say, for example, the Kingston router is 192.168.0.1 and all the PCs get assigned IPs from 192.168.0.2 and upwards via DHCP.

You would just have to plug the NTL cable modem into the new cable router's WAN port, then plug one of the LAN ports into the ethernet port on the wall, then the PC for that room into the router also. I would assign the NTL modem a different IP range, say, 192.168.1.1 as an example, then you would just need to go around all the PCs assigning them static IPs on the 192.168.1.0 subnet, and pointing the gateway to the NTL router.

Pretty simple all in and it's a great solution, just the inability to use DHCP is a minor pain in the rear but as long as you and the other guys are cool with manually assigning static IPs it's no big deal.

Also, that means you could simply change IPs again on any PC to revert to the Kingston connection in the event that someone's hogging all the bandwidth/the NTL is down/you need to test something, etc

 

[boYce]

Someone else is bound to post about the 9 month thing eventually

As for Phil99's suggestion, that's a good idea. You could simply have the NTL modem and a cable router in one room plugged into the ethernet port there. The only problem with this is that you wouldn't be able to use DHCP (assuming the other router has it enabled) so you would have to assign static IPs to each PC but it'd work fine.

Let's say, for example, the Kingston router is 192.168.0.1 and all the PCs get assigned IPs from 192.168.0.2 and upwards via DHCP.

You would just have to plug the NTL cable modem into the new cable router's WAN port, then plug one of the LAN ports into the ethernet port on the wall, then the PC for that room into the router also. I would assign the NTL modem a different IP range, say, 192.168.1.1 as an example, then you would just need to go around all the PCs assigning them static IPs on the 192.168.1.0 subnet, and pointing the gateway to the NTL router.

Pretty simple all in and it's a great solution, just the inability to use DHCP is a minor pain in the rear but as long as you and the other guys are cool with manually assigning static IPs it's no big deal.

Also, that means you could simply change IPs again on any PC to revert to the Kingston connection in the event that someone's hogging all the bandwidth/the NTL is down/you need to test something, etc

Thanks Phemo,

I dont really know much about networking so could you explain in a little more detail. I understand how you are saying to set-up the physical hardware but not what we need to do to the routers and each computer to make them work correctly. remember that i can't physically get to the Kingston router and that i can't see the router or any of the other computers on the current network?

also anyone get any other information on the NTL 9 month contract?