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Yet another boring upgrade question!


Holy Cheese

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Sorry guys, but I have a question about networking that I can't see discussed anywhere else on here.

The girlfriend wants to buy a new laptop this weekend and wants to be able to use it on a wireless network at home. At the moment I have our 2 desktops and her current laptop networked on a ZyXEL 650H ADSL router. Has anybody got a good recommendation for a WLAN router, and can you confirm that I would be able to use my 2 desktops connected by a normal LAN cable while her laptop runs over wireless? The router would need to be something simple to set up and configure as I'm no genius with networking  :P

Don't worry about price issues, I'm in Switzerland so prices down under won't be relevant.

Thanks in advance

Jack

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I use a Draytek 2700 and find them really good.  The only thing that disappointed me was the antenna wasn't that strong.  One I replaced it with a 7dBi one, it was great!

So whatever you buy, see if you can get one with a good quality antenna.  I heard good things and the Linksys ones.

Some hints:

Be sure to use WPA and not WEP.  If you can, use WPA2.  To use this you might have to install this:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=662BB74D-E7C1-48D6-95EE-1459234F4483&displaylang=en

I also used this site to generate a WPA passwords and keep it in a text file in a USB key behind the router.  Never use common words or a mixture of them.

http://www.kurtm.net/wpa-pskgen/

Cheeers,

Matt.

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I use a Draytek 2700 and find them really good.   The only thing that disappointed me was the antenna wasn't that strong.  One I replaced it with a 7dBi one, it was great!

So whatever you buy, see if you can get one with a good quality antenna.  I heard good things and the Linksys ones.

Some hints:

Be sure to use WPA and not WEP.  If you can, use WPA2.  To use this you might have to install this:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=662BB74D-E7C1-48D6-95EE-1459234F4483&displaylang=en

I also used this site to generate a WPA passwords and keep it in a text file in a USB key behind the router.  Never use known words or a mixture of them.

http://www.kurtm.net/wpa-pskgen/

Cheeers,

Matt.

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I use the NETCOMM NB9W - but that has a VOIP interface (which I love!) (ATA) as well as a 4 port router and wireless. I find I have not had a problem with using the wireless and find I get the same download speed (about 443k) over wireless as I do with wired and you can use wireless and wired at the same time.

BTW should you really trust the web sites that generate passwords and say that they do not keep a copy or send it over the net? I have always been cautious of such site for that very reason. I have made a password generator in excel using the random function.

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I'm happy with my Billion 7401VGPM ($160). Has both wireless and a 4-port router, VoIP and QoS, and handles ADSL2+. I agree with the comments about using WPA, but I'm a bit paranoid so I also use a MAC address filter.

Greg

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