Can anyone answer phone/computer question?

[Icc5]

We are moving to another house and I currently use DSL for my computer.
The new house does not have a phone line running to the office. Do I need to have a line put in or will I be able to use one of those plug in extensions that plug right into the electricity to be able to hook up the compute?
Bart

 

[Kozman]

Extending DSL

I'm not sure about the electric plug thingie, but you can use a wireless router. I used the electric plug in device back when I had dial up, but it worked poorly.

 

[bogey21]

Because I move my laptop back and forth between two residences I use Verizon Broadband. A little thing plugs into the side of my computer and it connects me to the internet like a cell phone (over the air). It is fast and has worked w/o any downtime or other complication for about a year now.

If you consider going this route, you need to find out which provider best services where you live be it Verizon, AT&T or Sprint. All three provide the service, but not everywhere.

Another advantage of using this method to interface with the internet is that you often will be able to use it when traveling. I just got back from South Florida and I was able to interface with the internet there exactly as at home.

George

 

[pjrose]

I'm not sure about the electric plug thingie, but you can use a wireless router. I used the electric plug in device back when I had dial up, but it worked poorly.

Wireless is great. Just set up the DSL hardware wherever the phone line is convenient, plug in a wireless router, and use your computer(s) wherever you want in the house. Depending on the size of the house you might have to experiment a bit with the location of the router, to ensure the wireless signal is strong in the office.

 

[Icc5]

Thanks

Thank you for all the suggestions.
Bart

 

[Icarus]

We are moving to another house and I currently use DSL for my computer.
The new house does not have a phone line running to the office. Do I need to have a line put in or will I be able to use one of those plug in extensions that plug right into the electricity to be able to hook up the compute?
Bart

There are a couple of ways to go here.

The simplest thing to do would be to have the phone company come out and put a phone jack in your office. You might want a fax machine in your office anyway. Then you put the modem, the wireless router/switch in your office and anything else that needs to connect in your house can use wireless to connect to the network. You can buy wireless repeaters if the signal isn't strong enough to make it to the rest of the rooms in the house. Those are relatively cheap.

I have a similar situation. My DSL connection is in my bedroom, and I have a bunch of wireless computers, printer, etc in my office.

I ended up buying a wireless bridge and a switch for the office, and I connect all the devices in the office to the switch and the switch to the bridge. Wireless bridges are relatively expensive compared to routers and switches. (They were, when I bought mine, I don't even see the model I bought being offered anymore. The bridge only has 1 ethernet port, so you also need the switch if there's more than one device.)

If all your computers in the other room are already wireless ready, you won't need the bridge and the switch.

If you aren't afraid to flash a router with new firmware, you can buy a linksys WRT54GL and put DD-WRT firmware on it, and configure it as a bridge. It has a 4-port switch built into it. My actual router is a WRT54GL, and I run it with the DD-WRT firmware which is as stable as a rock, more so than the manufacturers firmware. If four switch ports aren't enough, you can also connect a switch behind one of the ports.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000BTL0OA?tag=themusicsource62850-20

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Bridge

It's very easy to follow the DD-WRT instructions to put the open source firmware on the Linksys router. This is what I would do if I were doing it again.

-David