Question about High Speed Internet.

[Scaper-S2k]

How do you know how fast it is running?

I'm clueless. The guy hooked up a wireless network at one of my lady friendss home. It's where I keep my laptop most of the time.

All he really did was flip a little switch on the outside of my laptop and I was ready to go. Well, I guess he did have to enter in some kind of code or something. I was surprised it was that easy to setup, just flip a switch that I didn't even know I had on my computer.

So do I flip that switch off when I turn off my computer?

[grandview]

I'am very far from knowing anything about them.Not sure about the switch but the code he was doing was like a lock if you didn't do that anybody driving around could use the wireless you have hocked up. I think.

[RRS]

You can test the speed here. http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html

[Woody]

That is a 5h1t test site. No offense meant to you RRS, but CNET sucks.

Click here for a REAL one.

Select several servers (one at a time) to see your true throughput to various parts of the country.

[Scaper-S2k]

Well, the guy installed the router thing in the basement. And it's just sitting on the floor down there. Probably the worst place for it! He said I should put it up on the shelf in the basement. I'll have to try that later.

My computer says it's connected at 'Good' and 'Very Good'....it changes between the 2?


My test came back at about 3150 kbps. I don't know if that's good or bad.

[Woody]

The site I mention above does NOT have a "good" or "very good" rating. Good and very good would be relative to something, and with CNET that would be?????

3150 Kilobits per second (3.1 Mbps) may or may not be good, depending on what you purchased. Is it DSL or cable? What are the supposed throughput speeds?

In reality, 3.1 Mbps is "blazing fast" for about half of the country, who couldn't get a better speed if they tried.

[Scaper-S2k]

Woody, the 'Good' or 'Very Good' thing shows up when I click on my little internet connection icon thingie. It's for "Signal Strength". Not on the actual website. I went to the one you posted.

Oh, it's that Time Warner stuff.

[GrassMaster]

Words from the Internet Chief Security Officer.

So do I flip that switch off when I turn off my computer?

Erich, I don't know exactly what switch he flipped, but the 6 computers & laptop that I have at various locations on a Wireless internet, well 2 are hardwired via RJ45 cable or DSL Phone line, but I don't do anything except fire them up.

I don't think you would need to touch the switch, if it's working properly!

Well, the guy installed the router thing in the basement. And it's just sitting on the floor down there. Probably the worst place for it! He said I should put it up on the shelf in the basement. I'll have to try that later.

Erich, in my way of thinking, I would think that the router located in the basement is probably the worse possible location he could have placed your router.

I don't care if all connections are hard wired it's still a bad location to me.
Is it wireless or is all connections hard wired?

If it's wireless, it needs to be high on the first floor. Since you have a 2 story house and if is wireless I would put it in the center of the house on the second floor & at least have it as high as a desktop. Unless you do a lot of chilling in the basement?

Do not place it on anything metal like a filing cabinet & please try to figure using a straight line of sight to your access points & do not have your fireplaces in the straight line of sight between your puters & routers.

It's either a DSL or Cable modem unless you Up Narth folks are keeping secrets from us Rubes here in Georgia, it would be very simple for even a person of your likes to relocate it...

Which I would do, yes even if it's hard wired because you want to keep the distance on the cables to a minimum. Please do not come up with this idea of buying a couple of miles of Rj45 to connect at yo shop. Yes you could do it but you would need a lot more hardware to make it that far.

If you are in the correct century & keeping up with the times please enable your WinXP firewall settings. This is a must!

Also if you're wireless & live within 1,500' of other yankees or rednecks (Which I Doubt) or public access road you need WEP encryption so they will not be sniffing around on your network. People do jump in on other networks & do a lot of snooping around and other malicious things.

I like doing it to businesses mainly & telling them about it, because I like to hear about the Redneck Rocket Scientist they hired to install their easily accessed network that he over charged them a fortune for.

BTW: Over 50% of all networks tested still have the default user name & password which is admin please change that to something else. Please do not use your Dogs name that just came back from the vet & your phone number for password. I'll crack that in under 1 minute!

I strongly suggest a 8 character minimum of the Alpha Numeric language combined for password. Don't Use a password similar to Steve Case's old password & if you don't know who Steve Case is? Just forget it, OK!

I also suggest you disable all remote users in your WinXP System Properties.

BTW: If you are not a Freak of some kind, act right & set up a video cam & no frigging paper bag on yo head I might let you see & hear the King of Public Schooled Rube's of the State of Georgia via video cam!

There's more but this is a start for having a secure network. If Woody says different, listen to him I don't know Chit from Shinola!

Please remember that us folks that use High Speed access is a known target for for WI FI sniffers & Internet Hackers. They love to use our computers for storage & severs to keep & store porn pics, porn videos, illegal files and software of all kinds. Trust me they don't use people on dialup? Yes you are responsible for what's on your puter.

Protection is a must these days. I also suggest using a maximum of one shared folder per computer if you are going to be sharing files across a network.

Just because you delete a file on your hard drive doesn't mean it's gone, it's still there in most cases & if me or someone else can get on your network, we could grab that info quick.

Good Luck & if you have any questions just ask...
Networkbuster

[Scaper-S2k]

GrassMaster, the switch is just a little toggle switch on the front left of my laptop. I never even knew it was there and kinda hard to switch. So I assume it should just be left on all the time. A small orange LED lights up, but goes off when the computer is off, so all is good I guess.

This high speed was not setup in my home, (as mentioned) it is in a lady friends home where I keep my laptop most of the time. She has a 1 story house. But after seeing the speed, I'll get it at my home!

Here's all I know, there is a normal cable line coming in the home (downstairs). I know he needed a splitter, but she also got cable phone that day too. So I think he simply put on a splitter and ran it directly into a 'NetGear' brand router box....which is sitting on the concrete floor downstairs.

So my laptop is about 20' or so from it, and her computer is about 35' away. No cables are going into either computer. They gave her some type of crappy very small USB thing to plug into her computer to grab the signal. Mine is built into my laptop.

I can easily run the hardwire portion upstairs, so thatnks for that info.

I do have a firewall. My understanding is that it does have the WEP stuff because I saw a place to enter in that number. I did change the password, so thanks again.


I also want to thank you again for scaring the heck out of me and confusing me about Networks and such. Maybe I better go back to dial up now!

[GrassMaster]

And now what?

Mr. Erich:

Your laptop must run on electricity, mines a old style hand crank. I'm just guessing that switch just turns the WI Fi on & off.

I missed the part about at friends house & it's a miracle I can even read & understand the english language.

If it's 1 story house I would get that router 3 to 5 feet off the 1st floor and if possible in center of house.

If you near other folks you need either a internet login & or WEP Encryption both. I don't know what the newer routers are capable of today?

LOL, if I was brave & single living near other folks I would get me a directional WI FI antenna & work off of other peoples Network.

And for on the road...

http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html

Tater Chips Can...

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448

More Crap

http://www.radiolabs.com/

You would be surprised what folks put on their computer these days & think it's private & safe? Even company computers are full of junk that employees hide on their bosses computer. "What's on your company computer"

Think because you have your WinXP computer password protected it's safe? here's your choice of 5 free tools that can get you through that in a few minutes... (You can't stand guard over your puter every minute)

http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm

Nothing is safe these days!

[RSumar]

Hello, just to enlighten you on that laptop/WiFi issue. The switch on your laptop just enables the 802.11 wireless adapter that is built-in to your computer (most new laptop have this feature). Once you have turned on the WiFi feature your laptop will scan in a 100 ft radius for any wireless routers broadcasting the SSID name (the name configured by each router to name the network). If you are connecting to a router that has a WEP Security Encryption then it will require you to enter the security key (10 digits for 64 bit encryption and 15 digits for a 128 bit encryption). Hope this helps..........

Rick.

[Scaper-S2k]

Okay, I got hooked up with the phone company highspeed at my house. $20 per month for the first year, $30 there after.


Tested on home computer: 2685 kbps download. Upload is 615 kbps

That is slower than what I was getting with the cable company for downloads, but I need to retest it tomorrow.

For whatever reason though, it seems faster? Maybe it's because my home computer is a much faster rated computer than the laptop I have at one of the lady friends home?




Thanks for all the help in this thread and the other.

[ohreallythanks]

also try www.speakeasy.net and choose a test server closest to you and compare....those test are not 100% accurate...........run some flood pings to a public ip and tracert for true network performance

[Scaper-S2k]

I really don't understand the difference between cable and the phone company.

Both say they will download over 2Mb per second right?

But even on some fast sites that I have downloaded things from, they're no where near that fast for downloads to my computer.

When do you ever use download speeds that fast? Where are those sites?


Sorry for the dumb question, I just don't get it. I downloaded some songs that seemed pretty fast. The fastest places I have seen are sending around 350kb per second. So why do I need anything over 1Mb/sec anyway? Multiple downloads?

[Woody]

Earache:

Are you seeing 350 KB a sec or 350 Kb a sec!?! KB=kilobyte, Kb=kilobit.

350 kiloBYTES a second is roughly 3,500 kiloBITS per second.

Maybe one day you'll discover Usenet and all there is to be had from the newsgroups. It's then that you will appreciate higher throughput.

Myself, I'll take a 3Mbps connection with very low latencies over higher throughput but higher latencies.