Student House Network

[Frosty]

I've never had BroadBand b4 so im a bit new too all this. I've just moved into a Student house and we all want BB but i have a couple of questions.

1) There's no active phoneline in the house so would we have to pay montly line rental fee's on top of the actual broadband montly charge?

2) Is one of the benefits of getting cable istead of adsl that you don't have to pay line rental or do you ALWAYS have to pay line rental no matter what i.e with Blue yonder Cable

3) There are 5 rooms spread accross a 2 storey house...is wireless lan or a more traditional cable lan the best...is there much loss throught walls with wireless...and finally could you lot recomend hardware plz with prices

As always any help is really appreciated.

Adam

[daniel_owen_uk]

1. Yes
2. Dunno
3. Not sure, wired probably best but more difficult.

[Atomic]

1. You pay BT for the phoneline and the ISP for ADSL. (Both of which are needed) The min line rental from BT is only about £6 btw.

2. Cable you just pay per month for Internet Access.

3.a. Cabling a house if not fun, and chances are you wont be able to do it without the landlords permission even then when you leave you might have to take it all out again! Cabling a house properly will prob take a whole weekend and generate plenty of mess.
b. If its just normal wooden floors and non-massivly thick walls go for wireless. Its just easier on a whole, just slightly more expensive than cabling the house.

[Kumagoro]

I would go cable if i were you... NTL (if it is NTL) dont charge installation. My gf got a BT line (no choice) and they charged her £150 for connection the fecking rip off merchants.

[këö¬t]

ntl also do 9month minimum contracts for students (instead of the normal 12months.)

[Stoo]

Yup, blueyonder or ntl are your first choices..

Then if can't get either of those, get the bt line enabled and slap 1meg adsl on as a minimum..

[Twigman]

If you are a Computer Science/Engineer, ITO student or similar you can get money to netowrk you student home .
£43 if its only you, or £70 ish if there are 2 of you...just need to buy some stuff fill in a 1 page form....sounds good.
No, I dont have a link, and I dont know anyone who has done it, but worth investigating.

[Apex]

I would not recomend a wireless stup for the start.

[directhex]

wireless is a bad choice, the cons outweigh the pros.

if the landlord doesn't want to put in a wired network properly (ours did, he could hike the rent up for the next lot & take advantage of comsci students), then just sling long loops of cat5 all over the place. the ideal is wall plugs through the wall cavity, though

[Apex]

if you carn't go threw the walls....go along the out side

[directhex]

wise words. our upstairs phone sockets were installed like that by BT

[Kumagoro]

I read one time (in micromart) that you shouldnt put ethernet cables on the outside of the house. I cannot remember why exactly though. Also I have no problem with my WiFi kit. Had 6 player lan matches no prob.

[javalord]

If your going for cable broadband, it is *essential* that you check someone else's cable broadband in the area. Cable broadband can be effected by heavy leechers, which is what many students do all day.

[Apex]

I read one time (in micromart) that you shouldnt put ethernet cables on the outside of the house. I cannot remember why exactly though. Also I have no problem with my WiFi kit. Had 6 player lan matches no prob.

Thats why for the run outside you use stp cable and not utp cable

stp being sheilded twiested pair and utp being unshielded twiested pair.

[Kumagoro]

Ahh thanks Apex I can tell my bro he can do it now.

[Stoo]

If your going for cable broadband, it is *essential* that you check someone else's cable broadband in the area. Cable broadband can be effected by heavy leechers, which is what many students do all day.

Actually, I don't think that's as much of an issue these days, I lived in a student heavy broadband area at uni and I can't say it was noticable at all, most cable providers have a *lot* of spare capacity these days