Question about Eircom Broadband's Netopia Wi-Fi router

d93c2inhxfok4y

Hi all,

I'm new to this board, and was wondering could you help me out.

Myself and four mates are moving to Dublin next week for college, and we're looking to get broadband for our house. We'll be living Just north of O' Connell street, near Parnell Square.

We were thinking of getting Eircom Broadband (If anyone from this area can offer any better alternatives they would be much appreciated) but after checking it out I have a question.

In the details section of their broadband offers, it says you get a free wireless router, which is a Netopia Wi-Fi router, but it says "Allows up to 4 users to surf at the same time anywhere in the house."

Is this certain, or is there anyway to bypass this? I'm not a broadband expert, but surely the router just relays one signal to the house that any amount of computers can pick up on, as opposed to 4? Also, whats the deal with say, running a Playstation 3 online, does that count as one of the four? If you were playing online with a PS3, would only 3 other computers be able to access the internet?

I know it would be very, very rare that all 5 of us would be online at the same time, so this may not be a problem, but on the off chance that it would, I just wanted to check it out.

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated, thanks guys.

biko

The router gives each laptop/device a DCHP IPadress, max 4 are available it seems.

d93c2inhxfok4y

Ah, balls it anyway.

By that logic, if we were to assign the PS3 one of those IP addresses, we'd only be able to assign three laptops?

The fact that we'd have to choose 3 makes it worse, like you cant just have any three online at one time, it has to be a set three.

Anyone any advice on a good broadband provider which could service 5 laptops (albeit largely not all at once) and games consoles?

Again, thanks for any help.

AlmightyCushion

I think it's referring to the amount of ethernet ports on the router (it definitely has four) and may not be including wireless which is a bit lazy. It may take more than four when you include wireless access. I'd say it can take more but can't be certain as I've only ever had 4 connecting to mine (1 wired, 3 wireless).

Edit: I forgot all about my ps3. Unfortunately my sisters laptop isn't here so I can't check. She should be back tomorrow though so I can have the three laptops, desktop and pc running at once and see what happens.

d93c2inhxfok4y

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I think it's referring to the amount of ethernet ports on the router (it definitely has four) and may not be including wireless which is a bit lazy. It may take more than four when you include wireless access. I'd say it can take more but can't be certain as I've only ever had 4 connecting to mine (1 wired, 3 wireless).

Edit: I forgot all about my ps3. Unfortunately my sisters laptop isn't here so I can't check. She should be back tomorrow though so I can have the three laptops, desktop and pc running at once and see what happens.

That'd be brilliant mate, cheers for the help!
Great news about the ethernet ports too, that would probably solve it, the 5 laptops and any games consoles would all be running wirelessly anyway so hopefully that would work.

lynchie

It means 4 ethernet ports.. dhcp will serve 253 more computers.

MunsterCycling

+1

DHCP servers in the Netopias will serve up 253 address (possible more if you use the 10.x.x.x private address space) on any combination of wired (if you need more than the 4 ports you can daisy chain switches) or wireless. Its 253 because one is fixed for the router normally 1 or 254 and 255 is the subnet broadcast address which is received by all devices in the subnet. Hence the 255 - 2 = 253.

MC

Shane O' Malley

We use those modems at work and can confirm it is only the number of Ethernet posts available.

The limit of users is 253 and even that can breached by using additional equipment.