Help needed regarding routers.

MrJoeSoap

I know there is a router sticky and I have searched through it but I'm not very good with this area of technology and found myself lost quite easily. Basically, heres the problem:

I have recently gotten the Irish Broadband Breeze Lite 1mb connection. It is wired into my room in the attic of my house (not a very long distance).

My parents bought a new PC for downstairs yesterday and I am wondering what would be the best way to split the connection between both PC's.

Forgive me if I seem a little ignorant on the subject, but I assume the product I am looking for is a wireless router, yes?

If so, are there compatibility issues? The PC I have was put together myself and the one downstairs is a PC World job. Both reasonably high-spec and quite new. I can give exact spec and details if needed. I have looked through Komplett (my most likely place for purchasing) but have no real idea of what I am looking for or of which routers may be compatible or not.

Apologies if this seems a little basic or simplistic, I just don't want to purchase something to find it to be imcompatible.

All help is greatly appreciated, I'm on here quite regularly so I'll give any spec needed as soon as possible.

Thanks again,
Mark.

Red Alert

You first need a LAN which links the two machines - do you want to do this wired or wireless?

If you go for wired, any router will do. If wireless you need a wireless one like the Linksys WRT54GS (a very common one) as well as a PCI or USB wireless card for the downstairs PC.

The broadband plugs into the router so no particular PC needs to be on at any time.

MrJoeSoap

Cheers for the information, its greatly appreciated.

It'll have to be wireless. I think I'll need a USB wireless card for the new PC downstairs (the one currently without the internet) because usually the warantee is void if the inside is altered. Would this do the trick?

Is the Linksys WRT54GS available from Komplett, or even a similar one?

sisyphus

Kinda suspicious of USB based ethernet cards, but I guess if that's what you want.... I'd be more inclined to buy a regular PCI based one. Fair enough, it involves opening your tower and installing it, but this really is as simple as 1,2,3....
By the way, you'll need to configure your router also with the static IP details from IBB when you get it.

MrJoeSoap

I'd have no problem installing a PCI card as I built my entire PC myself, but this is with another computer where the warantee is broken if the case is opened.

Thanks for the static IP details though, I think I have all them here somewhere.