Eircom Wireless BB -AQuestion

_Whimsical_

Hello...
does anyone have Eircom wireless broadband and if so is it as reliable fast and hassle free etc as regular anchored to the wall by a mess of cables broadband ? Is wireless reputed to be as effective and as good generally speaking ? ..And yes Im relatively clueless and new to all this broadband malarkey ...any pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!Thanks.

quazzy

The eircom Wireless BB is grand, but if your new to this BB lark it might lead you
to a heart attack.

Anyhoo, the wireless package eircom offer isnt the same as the likes of Irish
Broadband.

The eircom BB comes through the phone system into a Netopia Router (supplied by eircom)
Then through the magic of a Wireless card (also supplied by eircom) you get your BB connection onto one or more pcs

The Wireless card itself can be a bit annoying to install on win 95,98.
Win 2000 and XP are handy enough


If you have and trouble. JUST POST HERE

Best o Luck

Sleepy

Have just ordered this for myself and my flatmates. The wireless cards Eircom were offering looked a bit pricey compared to the ones on Komplett.ie so I didn't bother ordering them and ordered some of these CNet Wireless LAN USB Dongles (802.11b)http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=120184&cks=SPC from Komplett instead. I believe the free Eircom router can support these as they're 802.11b?

Are there any other issues I should be worried about? Will there be any problems having a number of machines accessing the router at the same time? I'll be installing this myself cos there's no way I can afford to pay for an Eircom engineer install...

I'd be greatful for any tips/pointers/warnings you lads could give me!

aaronc

Sleepy wrote:

Have just ordered this for myself and my flatmates. The wireless cards Eircom were offering looked a bit pricey compared to the ones on Komplett.ie so I didn't bother ordering them and ordered some of these CNet Wireless LAN USB Dongles (802.11b)http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=120184&cks=SPC from Komplett instead. I believe the free Eircom router can support these as they're 802.11b?

Are there any other issues I should be worried about? Will there be any problems having a number of machines accessing the router at the same time? I'll be installing this myself cos there's no way I can afford to pay for an Eircom engineer install...

I'd be greatful for any tips/pointers/warnings you lads could give me!

I'd advise you to do it all yourself and for anybody considering the Eircom wireless broadband product it is important to realise that they are selling you DSL and a WiFi router. Calling this product wireless broadband is a stretch at best and is undoubtedly an attempt to confuse people about the different broadband options; to everybody but Eircom wireless broadband means broadband delivered without a wire.

Setting up a WiFi network is very easy and cheap, it's pretty much plug and play unless you are trying to go through thick concrete walls or the like. I have had good experiences with the Linksys routers (WRT54G). I don't know what the prices are these days but they should be coming down to well under €100. There are USB WiFi adapters around for about €30 that can be used to WiFi enable any PC or laptop. PCI or PCMIA cards should not be much more expensive.

hth.

Aaron

jor el

Is connecting your PCs to your router by 802.11b secure? Could a neighbour, for example, with a wireless network card in his PC piggyback on your internet connection?

I assume there would be authentication required for anyone to connect through the router, in order to prevent that.

McSpud

jor el wrote:

Is connecting your PCs to your router by 802.11b secure? Could a neighbour, for example, with a wireless network card in his PC piggyback on your internet connection?

I have 802.11b on new notebook & (because live in apartment?) get option to login to some neighbours network (weak signal) but requires authentication to connect.

I'm waiting on UTV but does anyone know their standard modem will work as wireless for me?

dub45

McSpud wrote:

I have 802.11b on new notebook & (because live in apartment?) get option to login to some neighbours network (weak signal) but requires authentication to connect.

I'm waiting on UTV but does anyone know their standard modem will work as wireless for me?

UTV have now changed the modem they supply to a Creative model. But no modem supplied by an ISP (with the exception of the eircom wireless pack) will by itself give you a wireless connection you will have to purchase a wireless router to give you that option.

By the way a guy who works in one of the computer shops around town was telling me that they get a lot of people complaining that the ub wireless dongles end up getting themselves broken quite frequently simply because they protrude so a card may be a less expensive option in the long run

DadaKopf

We're probably getting the Eircom 'wireless' home package soon. We live in one of those 3 floor red bricks, you know, fairly solid walls - and we need to connect computers from the top of the house to the return in the bottom.

We've considered putting the FREEFREEFREE router in the middle of the house. Is this free router likely to do the trick? I'm skeptical myself.

aaronc

jor el wrote:

Is connecting your PCs to your router by 802.11b secure? Could a neighbour, for example, with a wireless network card in his PC piggyback on your internet connection?

I assume there would be authentication required for anyone to connect through the router, in order to prevent that.

I wouldn't assume that! Most WiFi routers will have WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) disabled out of the box. One of the things WEP does is only allows computers with the correct key to be able to connect to the router, i.e. authentication but on a computer not a user basis (you will never be prompted to enter your password). There are problems with WEP (as there are with just about every protocol when it comes to security) but if what you are trying to protect is only your home network it would be more then adequate.

Most routers will also allow you to define which MAC addresses (i.e. which computers) can connect to the router. This can be less hassle then WEP since you don't have to put a key on every computer instead you just enter its address into the router. However with WEP traffic is encrypted with MAC address filtering it is not (with WEP traffic will be unecnrypted again between the router and your ISP unless you are using a VPN). MAC address filtering is also fairly easy to circumvent. Linux for instance lets you specify what MAC address you want an interface to use.

If you are not a CIA (don't know what the Irish equivalent is?) agent sending intelligence reports back to the Pentagon then WEP and/or MAC address access control lists would prevent most of your neighbours from siphoning off your bandwidth. Or you could do what I do and leave the router completely open, wait for your neighbours to connect and then go and ask them to chip in for the connection . I'm still waiting for someone to connect.

Aaron

aaronc

DadaKopf wrote:

We're probably getting the Eircom 'wireless' home package soon. We live in one of those 3 floor red bricks, you know, fairly solid walls - and we need to connect computers from the top of the house to the return in the bottom.

We've considered putting the FREEFREEFREE router in the middle of the house. Is this free router likely to do the trick? I'm skeptical myself.

You'll probably be ok. In my experience it's easier to get through roofs and floors then it is to get through walls, there are no bricks in a roof. If you are in an apartment block you could have concrete floors which would be a problem but for a suburban house a WiFi signal should be able to get through a few floors. I get from a good signal on the ground floor of my hosue from the router on the second floor.

Aaron

dub45

aaronc wrote:

You'll probably be ok. In my experience it's easier to get through roofs and floors then it is to get through walls, there are no bricks in a roof. If you are in an apartment block you could have concrete floors which would be a problem but for a suburban house a WiFi signal should be able to get through a few floors. I get from a good signal on the ground floor of my hosue from the router on the second floor.

Aaron

Further to what Aaron says above there really is no way of knowing in advance what will work where. If it does not work for you from your 'favourite position' you may have to experiement a bit. I was reading somehere recently that wi fi manufacturers were finding customers in Europe generally had far more problems than the USA mainly because the houses were generally older thicker walls certain materials in the walls etc. Cant remember where I saw the article so cant reference it.