Hi all,

My landlady is installing internet in my flat, except it's all wireless with no access to the box to plug in any sort of ethernet cable...
I'm not happy about it at all, but because of the extra charge on the rent to pay for the internet, I don't have the money to go and get my own line.

Is there anything which can act as a router/gateway/switch, except it would get it's incoming signal from wi-fi and share via one or more ethernet ports?
I'd quite like to run my own network with my own IP addresses (for static IP's configured on the router which I find more reliable).

Thanks for any help

Ben

Just install a WAP, connected to your switch.

We use WAPs to bridge between two buildings on opposite sides of the street, so that the users there can also contact the servers and get on the internet.

So something like this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linksys-Cisco-W ... 071&sr=8-1

That would pick up the wireless signal broadcast from the main router and shunt it out through ethernet for my machines?

Cheapest option would be to pick one of your existing boxes to use as a router, then simply plug it into a switch. You probably have all the hardware you need already?

On a Windows box, you'd tick the "share this connection" option on the wireless port. It then acts as a DHCP server and Internet router on the LAN port. I've done this exact thing before with no problems. Not sure how you do it on other OS, but I expect they can all do it.

A lot of wireless routers can indeed do the same thing these days, but it's not what they were primarily designed for so you need to read the manual before choosing one. I'll leave that job to you

Although I don't pay for my electricity, I'm loath to keep two machines on when I only need one on...But I fear this is probably the way I will have to go...

When I was doing it, I used my primary machine to share the connection. It's very rare indeed that I use another machine instead of this one, but I do sometimes use them in addition so for me there's no wasted power.

I do agree that leaving a PC on purely as a router is a huge waste of power. This is why I don't run a smoothwall, despite very much wanting to!

AirPort Express does the job brilliantly.

U_ltra stable too. I find a lot of the home networking products fall over quite a bit.

I've found Linksys stuff to be very good...Much more reliable than anything else I've bought.
I ended up getting that box I posted above, still waiting for it to arrive...

Same here. On a par with the Apple AirPort express I bought stability wise with both at 100%.

Our netgear router falls over every couple of days.

Seems to be working so far

Hmm, I've bought at least 3 Linksys routers of various models which were to some extent DOA and had to be returned and replaced.

The working ones are weak on features such as static DHCP assignment and firewall logging.

I've had luck myself with Netgear, but some here at work so seem to like to be re-booted every fortnight.

Why does none of this stuff just work?

I've only ever had 1 dodgy Linksys product & that was my fault for trying to download too much at once (router kept restarting)

Most networking stuff works providing you buy the right model. There's no point putting in £40 routers if you need proper business features like reservations & proper firewalls.

I did say "DOA". Out of the box, they didn't work. Their replacements did.... so nothing fundamentally wrong with the design but they suffer from, in my experience, poor QA or infant mortality.

I don't consider DHCP reservations to be especially high end. All of my non-Linksys £40 boxes have offered this and it's worked. On one Linksys this feature is absent (but do the specs ever tell you this level of detail?), on another it's there and doesn't work correctly (refuses to re-issue the same IP on reconnection). Compared with the likes of D-Link and Netgear, Linksys don't fare too well. YMMV.

I don't use Linksys software on them.

I use DD-WRT which is great - all the features under the sun, although I tend to only run as little as possible so it doesn't get sluggish. I keep meaning to see if it will go on our Netgear but I've not got round to it yet.