BT Home Hub wireless adapter query

A friend in work has recently ordered BT Broadband (he was on dial-up before) and he has had his BT Home Hub delivered a few days ago.

It is working okay using the ethernet connection but he wants to set up wireless.
He told me that he tried to set it up but the BT Home Hub couldn't find a wireless adapter so I presume he has to buy one?

I have an interest in this as I myself have recently bought a wireless router (namely a SpeedTouch 585) and am wondering whether I will also need to buy a wireless adapter?

Do wireless adapters come in the internal and external variety?
I know absolutely nothing about wireless and intend to try it out myself in the near future.

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I have an interest in this as I myself have recently bought a wireless router (namely a SpeedTouch 585) and am wondering whether I will also need to buy a wireless adapter?

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If you want to communicate wirelessly with the router you need either a PC / laptop / other device with built in wireless, or you need an adaptor (USB / PCMCIA / ethernet / PCI) to connect to the device and give it wireless functionality.

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(USB / PCMCIA / ethernet / PCI)

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Thanks Phil.

I didn't know there were 4 different types!

Would I be right in thinking that an ethernet based adapter is best?

Links to each type below, in no particular order but with typical supply companies.
USB
PCI
Ethernet
PCMCIA
Which one you prefer depends on your computer equipment. Personally I'd probably go for PCMCIA for a laptop and PCI for a desktop; at the end of the day you pays your money and takes your choice!

Good luck.

I've got a neat 3com PCMCIA one for my laptop, clicks in rather than having to take it out. It even works well!

Thanks for the info.

I decided to go for a USB one after although I haven't set it up yet.

I will try it out in the morning.

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I decided to go for a USB one after although I haven't set it up yet.

I will try it out in the morning.

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I have now set my wireless up (SpeedTouch 585) without issue but my mate says that his Home Hub wireless connection is very flaky.

He has had to move his PC (it's upstairs) directly above the Home Hub (it's downstairs by the way) in order to get any signal at all and when he turns the PC on he has a red X on his wireless network icon on the taskbar and he has to repeatedly repair the connection and after 3 or 4 attempts the wireless connection is okay until he turns the PC off.

When it does work the signal strength is 'excellent' or 'very good' by the way.

After going into the Home Hub home page I noticed that he appears to have interleaving enabled as his sync is 7616.

He doesn't really need interleaving on as he is under a km from the exchange (straight line distance) with a downstream attenuation of only 19 dB!

It seems that BT enable interleaving by default probably to cut back on customer support like a few other ISP's.

He is so fed up of wireless he is thinking about going for an ethernet connection, is the Home Hub wireless really as flaky as this?

If so can anything be done about it like a firmware upgrade for example?

Cheers.

Edited by deleted (Mon 05-Feb-07 21:05:32)

Post deleted by CurlyWhirly