12 person network set-up?

[Ethos]

Moving into a house with 12 people in around 2 weeks and want to sort out sharing the connection between us! What is the best way to do it? Equipment recommendations? I havent got a spare pc to use as a server either....

Can reply here or mail me! Thanks in advance.

Ethos

[Moby-Dick]

have you got broadband ?
Probably a good plan to invest in a dsl/cable router (for asdl I personally like the Draytek Vigor 2600 , but you can get cheaper )
which you could connect to your network switch - the router will act as the dhcp server so you can all share the connection.

If you can obtain a router PC ( you can pick them for under £100 if you shop around - I got a PII 333 small form factor compaq for £50 at a computer fair ) then you can use it to run something like smoothwall , or if you want more of a server ( that can do things like bandwidth limitation), clark connect .

[Richie]

You DEFINITELY want a bandwidth control program in there with 12 ppl as it only takes 1 or 2 selfish gits to ruin the speeds for everyone......

Looking at 1-2MB as well ?? (price should be ok split 12 ways)

[Agent]

Get a router that can either load ballence (and set download speeds preferably), some dedicated software for it, or learn Linux and use it as a router

[Ethos]

Not sure about the connection yet sorry, won't be able to find out until I get up there! But no doubt it'll be adsl / cable .... the other users will only be using it for email / ie really. None of them are really into games / downloading so im pretty confident none of them will rape the connection (Well apart from me). I was thinking ...

Router w/modem then uplink to a switch?

Is that possible?

Also what wireless choices do I have, how much will it cost?

I could search through goggle and find all of this im sure, but its nice to have personal recommendations!

Ethos

[ingouk]

if u get cable i can recoomend draytec vigor 2300.

[Moby-Dick]

I take it the 2300 is as good as the 2600 is for DSL

The buffalo wireless routers are pretty nice ( if you choose to go wireless - make sure its 54g if you want to be able to tranfer files internally ) I think the buffalo kit is about £100 or so then about £50 per card ?

[Ethos]

£50 a card is too much, everyone will moan about that! So im guessing wires is the way to go!

[Wolf Man]

One small problem you may face is that, if 11 people are surfing and loading pictures and your ingame and you dont have any bandwidth limitation then you will lag, because remember that IE takes as much bandwidth as possible to load the pages faster. So you definatly want some form of bandwidth limitation

[lampPost]

Originally posted by Moby-Dick
If you can obtain a router PC ( you can pick them for under £100 if you shop around - I got a PII 333 small form factor compaq for £50 at a computer fair ) then you can use it to run something like smoothwall , or if you want more of a server ( that can do things like bandwidth limitation), clark connect .

yeah, great idea. you could easily run smoothwall or IPCop on a P100. Just watch not many ADSL modems are actually supported

[SilentDeath]

on my 4pc lan, if any of them d/l more than 8k/s i get small anooying lag spikes (adsl). netlimiter is good for limiting

[CrimsonAvenger]

Peeps keep mentioning Bandwidth control progs - What and where pls ?

Thanks

[Wombatwilson]

net limiter i have it if u want it?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Post me a link pls

Thanks

[Wombatwilson]

www.myhouse.com lol

http://www.netlimiter.com/

[5lab]

i got a 16 port 100baset switch f/s at the moment - sounds like you might find it useful?