Setting up home wireless.

David41

David41

David41

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Joined
23 Apr 2009
Posts
600
Location
Glasgow
Hi,

I usually run a wired connection straight into my computer. However my brother will be getting a laptop for Christmas, which he will want to be able to connect to the internet wirelessly. The problem is my ISP is Virgin Media and I still have one of the old cable modem box things. The grey/silver one with the green lights on the front. What's the best way to go about setting up so that me and my bro can pick up a wireless connection, or I can still have a wired connection if possible? Do I have to buy a new cable modem/router.
 
Virgin usually supply wireless routers, so you could call them up and ask for one free or at a discount. However, there are much better ones you can buy.

You can keep the Virgin cable modem and still have a wired connection. You connect the Virgin cable modem to the router, your computer to the wireless router by a cable and your brothers laptop wirelessly to the router. That's the simple explanation!
 
Simplest fix would be just buy a new router that has wifi in it.

You plug into one of the Ethernet ports and your brother can use the Wifi.

A couple of recommendations:

Linksys WRT54GL £40

Supports 11G Wifi and generally pretty good, you can also flash it with 3rd party firmware such as Tomato which adds a heap of new features.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-052-LS&groupid=46&catid=1451&subcat=1455

If you wanted something with newer 11n wifi then maybe something like this:

Linksys WRT160NL £70

Not really seen many reviews for these but they should be fairly decent,

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-112-LS&groupid=46&catid=1452&subcat=1457
 
Thanks for your replies.
This is a pic of the back of the £40 one you recommended wij.



So, do I just plug the ethernet cable from my current cable modem/router into the "internet" slot. Then run another ethernet cable from "1,2,3 or 4" into the back of my computer. Then setup a wireless connection for my brother?

One last question. I have a 10mb connection. Can I dictate what proportion of the bandwidth my bro gets and how much I get? It's just that he'll be doing general pottering about on the internet, while I do more downloading, online gaming etc.
 
Spot on.

Cable modem into the "Internet" port, you use 1-4 for wired devices, your brother can use WiFi.

RE Bandwidth management - I'm pretty sure you could do this with Tomato, for instance you can set up some traffic shaping / QoS settings to ensure that web/skype etc. is still responsive if you've got some downloads running.

http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

Pretty easy to install, just upload it via the web interface, loads of guides around and posts on here relating to what you want to do.
 
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