Topic: Routers

[Jaminxz]

You guys,

sorry if i've been harassing the boards recently but there's loads i need to do or am thinking about doing!

right next september i'm movin in with 9 mates, and pretty much all of us are gonna have pc's, and we all want access to the internet from our machines. I've been told that routers will be the best way to do this, but i've no idea what to do, what to look for and how to set up etc.

Now i'm guessing they're like wirless networks basically, but i've been told to get a good ping time?

so to summarize, i need to know what i should be looking for, also about broadband connections, whats the fastest available??

thanks guys

[Sandra]

Ok do you know if you will be using cable or ADSL ?
I think that for most practical purposes 2mb is currently the fastest speed whether you go with cable or ADSL but you may not get that on ADSL in the area that you are going to be in. ADSL is more dependant on distance from the exchange and quality of the line than cable is.
So if there are 10 of you online at the same time you would be sharing 2mb between you giving you each 200k or around 4 x dial up speed. I dont know how this would effect pings for gaming as I am not an online gamer.
Wired networks are faster than wireless for transferring files between your LAN pcs but you shouldnt notice any difference in accessing the net on the WAN, especially if you get 54G wi fi stuff  

[Jaminxz]

Ok thanks sandra. Cable isn't available, it's gonna be asdl. I did find a 8mb conetion, but not available in the area, 2mb is the fastest.

To connect all the pc's will we need like 10 routers? or can we get like a central hub and then get pci wireless network cards for each machine?? One of my friends mention the ping time between the machines and the hub, will this be noticeable if we buy like cheap wireless equipment or will it not matter too much?? so what should we be looking for if we like to play quick games, as in mps between the wireless networks?

What i'm thinking now, just to varify i've got the right idea about the set up is tascalli 2mb broadband,

something like this at the phone line connection point -

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=82066

and then pci wirless cards in each of the pc's, like this for example -

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=60706

is this right? or am i missing something??

thanks

Jaminxz

[Sandra]

If you know the postcode of where you will be staying you should be able to do a search on the ISP site that you are thinking of going with to see if ADSL is available at 2mb or possibly less and also if if you try the cable companies you can check to see which, if any, service that location.

You really need to know which type of connection you will be using before deciding on which type of LAN to set up.
Whichever you go with you will find it cheaper and easier to hard wire the LAN using ethernet cables if that would be possible or at least get as many pcs connected by ethernet that you can.
I think that my wi fi router has 6 channels so I think you would need a very expensive one to handle 10 wi fi connections simultaneaously.

[Sandra]

That should be fine.
I didnt realise that you could connect up to 128 wireless users off a single point so there shouldnt be a problem, I knew that you could have a total of 253 from various configurations of hubs/switches etc but not the wi fi part

[Jaminxz]

yeah i've done a check, 2mb is the fastest availaible and cable isn't available.

When we set up the lan, i'm guessing the hub thing will have to connect to one pc, will that need to act as a server??

[Dack]

Nope

The Router does all the hard work of allocating IP addresses to your machines as and when they appear on the network. No machine needs to act as a server.

I've got my wireless router attached to a modem in a bedroom upstairs while my computer equipment is all downstairs.

[Jaminxz]

cool that's good news. How hard is it to set up security, i mean like encrypting the network wo the neighbors can't get on the newtwork??

also will we all have unique ip addresses so we can all play games online??

[Sandra]

Security shouldnt be a problem as you just enable the WEP mode level that you want.
I think it would be easier having one pc hardwired initially to set the router up.
I must admit I dont know how you will go on for IP addresses for online gaming as you will only have the one WAN IP address but up to 253 LAN IP addresses.
To the outside world I can only assume you would all be on the same IP address  

[Hiatus]

Well...I haven't been on here for awhile...yello every1

We've got a wireless setup in our suite in residence. My roommate bought a D-Link wireless router (up to 108mbps wireless! well, with the proper receiver of course...). We all have USB D-Link receivers which work quite well. I'm thinking of buying a D-Link Extreme-G receiver so I can actually get 108mbps wirelessly. Anyways...

For security my roomie set up MAC filtering. It's a bit more complicated and annoying, but probably the safest if you don't want people jumping on your network.

For internet gaming, internal LAN games shouldn't be a problem. If you want to play games externally, you have to open the right ports on the router. Other than that, it shouldn't be a problem.

[Jaminxz]

HI again guys. Sorry to come back to this thread after months but we'll be setting this network up soon so i'm gonna need loads of help if ya don't mind!!!

right i've done a ton of research into this and i think i'm pretty sorted now except for a few things i need clearing up from you guys!!

ok so we've been persuaded to go with gigabit ethernet because all that fast data transfer is too tempting!!! so my first question is, can a switch act like a router? if we get a 8 port gigabit switch will this allow us to all connect to the net aswel as all being ona a LAN or not?

and also is it completely necessary to have one port per pc? i'm asking because was reading somewhere that hubs can become slow after conecting 5+ pc's to it.  Then i was thinking have 4 pc's connected to one switch, the other four connected to another switch then both switches connected to the hub. This is probably a bit more than we'd like to pay so will it be ok just to have one 4 port ethernet switch?

also if it will work with the switch do we need cat5e cables from each pc to the switch, with a gigabit network card in each pc, or does cat5e not support gigabit??

thanks

Jaminxz

oh and i forgot to mention we will have a 4mb cable connection to the net, and ask what type of cat5 a pc - hub(or switch) connection needs?

thanks again

[Sandra]

I will have to look into the switch/hub thing, its not something I have been involved with unfortunately.
The most I have had connected is 4 pcs hardwired to a router and a couple of others connecting by wi fi.
I havent heard of gigabit ethernet needing a special lead so I assume a standard Cat 5 should do.
Again I havent used gigabit yet, only 10/100mbs but there are more and more mobos coming out now with gigabit onboard.
I am a little busy at the moment and am away all day tomorrow so it may be friday or saturday before I get chance to look into the switch/hub thing for you but as soon as I get time I will see what I can find out  

[Jaminxz]

Hi again, sorry to bother you again but i think i may have answered one of my questions.

After reading into it a little more, i think now we will need the following connenections -

gigabit ethernet card in all 8 pcs with direst cat5e conection to 8 port gigabit switch. This will give us gigabit speeds on the lan for sharing files. (If 7 people have gigabit cards and one just 100mbps card gigabit transfer will still be possible between all other 7 pcs but not the 1)

the 8 port gigabit switch will then needed to be connected to a 1 port hub via cat5e which will give us internet access, up to 2mb if only one pc is using the net?

sorry to keep askin to much but it's confusing me! any help would be gratefully appreciated!

thanks

Jaminxz

[Sandra]

Sounds ok but as I said I will look into it fully when I get chance.
Why do you think that you will only get 2mb speed if you only have one pc on the net for a 4mb connection ?
You should get the full 4mb if its only one pc is using it, there shouldnt be any significant loss of data flow rate no matter how many connections and switches or hubs there are.

[Sandra]

I found this article about gigabit networks.

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article41-page1.php

Its a couple of years old so the prices it mentions may have come down now but it sounds as if CAT 5 cable will be ok as long as its connected correctly.

See this part on page 4 :

Four pairs required
As this Cisco article shows, 1000Base-T uses all four twisted pairs of the Category 5 (or higher) cable to create four 250Mbps channels. (A different encoding scheme -- 5 level PAM -- is also used so that the signals stay within the 100MHz bandwidth rating of CAT5 cabling.) These two features result in the ability to achieve full gigabit bandwidth while using existing CAT5 cabling.

But since 10/100Base-T required only two of the four CAT-5 cable pairs, some people didn't bother to connect the unused pairs when doing their own cabling. In other cases, the unused pairs might have been used for telephone or Power-Over-Ethernet (POE).