mbm wrote:
On Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:10:11 +0000 steveydoteu alug@stevey.eu allegedly wrote:
ALUG,
I am looking into a purchase, nothing to high end, just as a means of discarding a number of cables in my room. The problem arises when I have no experience or knowledge of using WAPs before.
My current setup is as follows:
BTHomeHub (2nd gen I believe) is connected into powerline adaptors one of which is used as an outlet in this room. I have then connected a LAN switch to the adaptor, which is then cabled to all machines that require access.
With this in mind all current devices can actually be used via Wifi, if it was not for the HomeHub wifi being utter crap. So I am looking for advice or suggestions for a WAP that is around ~£50 that will cope with a main desktop, media server, and various consoles.
Steve
Your configuration sounds unusual. If I understand you correctly, your BT hub is connected direct to your phoneline and you run a mains wired connection off that to another powerline unit in a room where you then run a bunch of wired devices off a switch. You want to replace that switch with a WAP and do away with the cables? Why? If you are having performance problems, the most likely culprit may be the powerline connection - particularly if you have any extension cables in the loop.
I'm assuming that you are using powerline because you cannot get a good enough wireless signal from the existing BT hub in the room with the desktop server and consoles. You could just replace the BT hub with a decent ADSL router - most come wireless enabled these days and usually also include a four port switch so you can hang four devices (or more if you cascade switches as you seem to be doing) from one DSL connection. Any of a number of companies make resaonable DSL routers these days, though I can recommend Linksys, Zoom or Thomson (despite the fact that Thomson actually make the BT hub...). I've had problems with Netgear in the past and the low end Belkin kit can cause problems (though to be fair I've had good performance out of a really cheap (£28) Belkin WAP).
In my own network I currently use a Cisco 837 ADSL router in front of an ASUS WL 500g (running openwrt). I use the wired ports off the ASUS more than the wifi capability though.
If you really want to move to wireless, you will, of course need to add wifi cards to the devices you wish to connect which will add to the expense of the new WAP or wireless router. If I were you, I'd check the performance of your powerline first though.
Mick
The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this?
Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt
I think I may have explained it poorly in my first message, I was pretty tired at the time.
At present the existing setup is as follows:
Upstairs on the landing is the router, this is connected via a short RJ45 cable to a powerline adaptor.
There are then additional adaptors in three other rooms downstairs, one of which being mine.
The adaptor in my room is then connected to a LAN swich using another short RJ45 cable. My desktop and so forth are then patched into the network via this LAN switch.