[Soupdragon]

Hello:

I have suffered with my BT broadband box for long enough now, so, can anyone recommend a turnkey alternative to home hub?

I would like to think there were options under £70!

Thanks in advance.

[silkstone]

I've been using a Netgear DG834G wireless modem/router for about two years now and have had no problems at all. It has bog standard 54Mbps wireless and you can get faster ones if your wireless card supports them, but this works fine for me.

£42 from Amazon...

Amazon.co.uk: Netgear DG834G 54Mbps Wireless ADSL2+ Modem Firewall Router with 4-port 10/100 switch: Electronics & Photo

[Dabhand16]

Ive got a Netgear 108Mbps one and never had a problem. Had it for a while now, and at the time paid about £99, although I have seen a 125Mbps Netgear one for £75 in Costco.

[chrisa]

Make sure it is compatible with BT. I had an older netgear, which when changed to the newer BT Total Broadband would no longer work with BT.

[stupot]

To date i have used Netgear and Linksys and my personal preference would be Linksys (WAG354G) as i was really unimpressed by my Netgear router (DG834N) as it kept dropping my connection and not connecting for hours. This could be a whole number of reasons for this and you have two users of Netgear above who have experienced no problems!!

I do use a Netgear PCI adapter and a PCMCIA card with no problems whatsoever and find the user interface alot more straight forward on the Netgear equipment than the Linksys.

[Markulous]

People use wireless?

[Soupdragon]

Originally Posted by Markulous

People use wireless?

Meaning?

[Soupdragon]

I have to confess to being somewhat dippy with all things internet.

Can I assume the suggested alternatives will just plug into my phone point the same as the BT box?

[Markulous]

Originally Posted by Soupdragon

Meaning?

Originally Posted by Soupdragon

I have to confess to being somewhat dippy with all things internet.

Can I assume the suggested alternatives will just plug into my phone point the same as the BT box?

Get more grief on rubbish wireless (usually cos of interference/blocked signals rather than poor wireless routers) and go for cabling; totally reliable and totally secure. Most routers and computers have a network port. OK, so you have a bit of wire between the two

[Dabhand16]

If I connect with a cable the speed is like lightning. Problem is my router is next to my front door and the computer is in the back bedroom.

[Soupdragon]

Originally Posted by Dabhand16

If I connect with a cable the speed is like lightning. Problem is my router is next to my front door and the computer is in the back bedroom.

Pretty much the same with me, well obviously not your bedroom, but some distance from the router.

[Larne]

I have cable so slightly different setup but on the common bit I use Belkin routers having moved away from LinkSys some years ago. Interestingly my wife's laptop is the only wireless computer we have, the wireless network is mainly used to provide a 'bridge' between two cabled networks, one on the ground floor and one on the first floor of the house.

Can't say I notice any difference between wired and wireless in general, my broadband is only 4Mb (although I think it maybe just got upgraded to 10Mb) and the wireless runs at 50Mb. Where I do notice the difference is when transferring backups to the network file store on the downstairs network over the wireless WAN. Copying a 7GB Photoshop backup can take a few hours so I just tend to leave those to run overnight

[stupot]

Have used wireless now for over 2 years and my current setup is 100% reliable (Yes i have NEVER had a connection problem) it connects each and every time i switch on my PC, as for interference well i pick up 4 other wireless networks from my neighbours and never noticed any interference. Ok i could have a faster wired connection but my wireless network connects fast enough for my broadband connection so no bottleneck.

As for security well the only known method for cracking a WPA encrypted network is by bruteforce which attempts to hack the passkey now i use a 63 character alphanumeric key and assuming a would be hacker using a decent utility which would probably manage 60 attempts a second thats 62^63 or 8.3306029999439502888147660318024e+112 combinations might take a little while!!! This combined with MAC filtering, disabling SSID etc, etc... i can safely say i really dont worry

[Markulous]

Originally Posted by stupot

Have used wireless now for over 2 years and my current setup is 100% reliable (Yes i have NEVER had a connection problem) it connects each and every time i switch on my PC, as for interference well i pick up 4 other wireless networks from my neighbours and never noticed any interference. Ok i could have a faster wired connection but my wireless network connects fast enough for my broadband connection so no bottleneck.

As for security well the only known method for cracking a WPA encrypted network is by bruteforce which attempts to hack the passkey now i use a 63 character alphanumeric key and assuming a would be hacker using a decent utility which would probably manage 60 attempts a second thats 62^63 or 8.3306029999439502888147660318024e+112 combinations might take a little while!!! This combined with MAC filtering, disabling SSID etc, etc... i can safely say i really dont worry

Yeah, I use other people's wireless connection when I'm away (usually without their knowledge!) so I'm pleased that some choose wireless!

A mate of mine at Uni had as an assignment to crack a "safely encrypted" WPA network without using bruteforce - 30 minutes. He won't touch wireless until the next generation of encryption (which he reckons will take too long to break)