Wireless router help needed please

regedit

I have purchased and Acer ferrari 400 series laptop which is due to arrive on Monday. It has Integrated wireless 802.11g LAN.
I have never had any contacts with wireless network in the past so I have no idea about it.
Basicaly, I would like a wireless router which would connect my laptop to the net and occasionaly my wive's Think Pad. I would like to make sure that the router can be also connected to a deskytop PC just in case I ever go back to a desktop PC.
This might sound simple for most of you but due to the fact that I never dealt with it, I don't know much about it.
I would like to get a router (I can see that the new Argos has at least a dozen) that would have a strong and consistent signal. We have a 3 bedroom house and I will be using it only within the house, possibly the back garden if weather permits. I do not play much games online if that is of any help.

Any advice appreciated. Is Lynksis better than D Link, Netgear or Belkin?

aidan_walsh

I have a Netgear DG834G and have never had a bother with it.

yossarin

i have found my D Link to be a bit pants.
netgear stuff seems to be more solid.

regedit

aidan_walsh wrote:

I have a Netgear DG834G and have never had a bother with it.

Looks fine. I have heard only good stories about Netgear. Wondering in Lynksis (part ofd Cisco) would be a match.

regedit

My Acer arrived yesterday and I connected it to the Netgear DS834G. Everything is ok so far but my connection is not secure. I am worrying that someone might hijack my connection! This might sound funy to some of you but my knowledge on networks is realy limited. I am able to access the 192.168.0.1 but when i tried to secure the network, i messed things up so i had to reset the router. Basicaly, two loaptops will be using this connection and I would like to "lock" it to outside users. Any help greatly appreciated.

leo.leo.leo

Hi all,

I've read some info about router and it seems that netgear gives more affidability. I have a BT broadband connection. Does it suit right with that? Which netgear to choose?

Thanks,

Leonardo

PauloMN

Regedit - There's a few things you can do to improve security, and setting them up on the DG834G is pretty straighforward. What I would do it:

- First change the name of the network from the default "NETGEAR" or whatever it is by default to your own made up name.
- Then set your network ID to hidden (I think it's called SID in the router config page).
- Then apply at least WEP security, and use a hard-to-guess passphrase to generate the key. You will need to implement these changes to each laptop/PC you are connecting to the router via wireless. So once you've changed the router settings, you need to change the wireless network properties on each laptop also to put in the new network name and WEP key.
- Finally change the admin password on the router to something else. Depending on whether you want to be able to access the router from work or wherever, you may want to enable/disable remote admin.

You will learn a lot by just messing about with the settings, you can always reset the router if you get into trouble. I found the help pane beside each settings page to be excellent, and it explains in good detail what each setting does.

When you are more comfortable using it, you can add more security like WPA, and MAC addressing, but what I've suggested above will be enough to keep out accidental connections to your network, or casual hackers.

Oh, as I always say to people - don't forget to review your firewall settings on each machine to make sure you are allowing connections within certain IP ranges. How many times have I spent ages trying to figure out a connection problem only to realise my firewall was blocking it....

Leo - you want an ADSL modem router - just like described above. See the Netgear link above in the earlier post.

regedit

PauloMN wrote:

Regedit - There's a few things you can do to improve security, and setting them up on the DG834G is pretty straighforward. What I would do it:

- First change the name of the network from the default "NETGEAR" or whatever it is by default to your own made up name.
- Then set your network ID to hidden (I think it's called SID in the router config page).
- Then apply at least WEP security, and use a hard-to-guess passphrase to generate the key. You will need to implement these changes to each laptop/PC you are connecting to the router via wireless. So once you've changed the router settings, you need to change the wireless network properties on each laptop also to put in the new network name and WEP key.
- Finally change the admin password on the router to something else. Depending on whether you want to be able to access the router from work or wherever, you may want to enable/disable remote admin.

You will learn a lot by just messing about with the settings, you can always reset the router if you get into trouble. I found the help pane beside each settings page to be excellent, and it explains in good detail what each setting does.

When you are more comfortable using it, you can add more security like WPA, and MAC addressing, but what I've suggested above will be enough to keep out accidental connections to your network, or casual hackers.

Oh, as I always say to people - don't forget to review your firewall settings on each machine to make sure you are allowing connections within certain IP ranges. How many times have I spent ages trying to figure out a connection problem only to realise my firewall was blocking it....

Thanks very much Paulo. Greatly appreciated.