Any phone experts?

[Mr. BILL]

I have had three phone lines in my home for a while. I use line three as my internet line for my office. Problem is, I can't get a connection faster than 29K. If I plug into one of the other lines, I can get 48-49K, so it's not my modem.

Now my wife has had line 2 disconnected as we have added a cable line for IP service downstairs. My office is upstairs and I don't want to run cable all over the house so connecting to the cable hook-up isn't an option.

My question is, why is my line 3 so slow and can I switch the line 2 (disconnected) with the line 3 to get a faster connection?

[jsmith]

you can switch the connections at the junction box outside the house, or inside where the lines are distributed throughout your house. inside, if it's a wiring terminal junction, just move the incoming pair of wires representing your internet phone line to where your old "line 2" connection is on the terminals. outside, in the "owner access" part of the junction box there will probably be rj11 plugs that you can just switch. in effect, your "line 2" connections inside the house will now be your internet line. the poor connection is probably caused by the inside wiring and not the outside since you probably have a new line drop from having three lines into your house.

that would be a shame though, not to use your cable connection. there are two options to connect your cable / ethernet to your office using existing wiring - you can use either your phonelines or powerplugs which use existing electrical connections. in both cases you will need additional devices to accomplish the connection. it is probably more worthwhile to run an ethernet cable up to your attic / crawlspace (if you have one) and figure the distribution from that point...

[Ken300D]

It gets a little more complicated, but if you have a cable modem in one part of the house, I'd use wireless networking to distribute it everywhere else.

Probably the simplest thing is to get a combination cable modem with a wireless router/firewall. Like the NetGear MR314 at $115 or the Linksys product at the same price. Then you get a wireless card or USB wireless network adapter for every computer you want to run in the house and you're set. High speed access.

If you go with a wireless product, be sure to change the SSID name to something non-default and set a 128-bit WEP encryption key - otherwise your neighbors and passersby can tap into your network.

Ken300D

[Ashman]

If you have the same phoneline in yoru office a syou do downstairs, meanign the same number is wired up, you can go with phoneline networking equipment.

I recommend linksys as they are easy to configure, and work well.

You can then share your cable connection with both computers without interrupting your telephone service.

Best part is, you only need a phoneline router, and one phoneline network card for your computer. the downstairs system will still use its ethernet card to connect to the router.

E-mail me if you want me to work up some more detailed information for you.

Alon

[jcyuhn]

I like wireless, especially if you are working on a laptop. It's convenient to have internet access anywhere in the house and yard. Plus it gives you access to cable modem speed internet. Once you get accustomed to it, you'll be cancelling the second phone line - there's just no comparison.

If you're worried about sharing one internet connection between two computers, don't be. It's easy to setup, and you can't tell any performance degredation. My wife and I have been sharing a cable modem at home for years. First with a Netgear router, more recently we've added a Cisco wireless switch in addition. The only problem we've found is when we both attempt to use secure VPN access to our employers - only one can do so at a time. Other than that, no issues and it's fast.

[Lebenz]

This topic has been pretty well covered. One additional test is to go to the phone box outside your house, open the user accessible section and connect a phone directly to the interface. If you have a lap-top you can connect that to the interface. The purpose is to test the line quality from the interface itself. If you get a faster connect here than in the house, it means that the problem is due to your internal wiring. Possibly due to too many splitters or corroded wiring, causing a voltage loss, or perhaps due to improper grounding (a common cause for noise on the line), In any event, if it works better from the interface than inside the house, the problem is in the house. In this event, you may be stuck for the repair unless you have some type of inside wiring repair insurance.

If the problem is evident at the box, it makes a clear case that the problem is the phone company’s responsibility. Report this to them when you talk to them

[Mr. BILL]

Thanks to all! I am just going to plug into the downstairs router for my connection on my laptop.

Thanks again

[JCE]

I checked with my son Chris, ( www.warewolf.net) and he provided the following:

For jcyuhn:

Several of SMC's products (www.smc.com) support multiple VPN client pass-through, which might solve the problem of he and his wife being unable to connect to their work VPNs simultaneously; a wireless version that claims to do this is the SMC7004VWBR for about $104+ street.

For Ken300D:

Even if you change the SSID from the manufacturer default, and enable 128 bit WEP, wireless still presents many problems. The SSID can be sniffed out of the air using freely available software such as NetStumbler (www.netstumbler.org) unless your access point supports setting up a closed network (i.e. not responding to the probe frames where the SSID is set to null/broadcast, and not sending out beacon frames) then there is a fair chance that the network can be found. Also, even with WEP enabled, unless you're changing the keys regularly (which is a pain to do manually especially across many clients) or are using an access point implementation that assigns keys dynamically, or if you're using a product that has a vulnerable implementation of the RC4 cipher used in WEP, then chances are your keys can be cracked relatively easily (using AirSnort or WEPcrack, etc.).

Also, though it may seem counterintuitive, don't require that your wireless clients use WEP to associate with the access point. Though this may seem like it decreases security, it prevents you from being vulnerable to a certain attack which would expose your WEP keys without too much trouble on the part of the attacker. Use WEP just for data encryption, not for association (if your access point provides that option).

One product line that is immune to these two particular problems (the WEP vulnerabilities and the broadcast SSID issue) is the ORiNOCO product line (www.orinocowireless.com). However, there are other issues attendent to wireless networks (interference from anything else in the 2.4 GHz ISM spectrum, such as cordless phones or microwave ovens), so unless mobility is a chief concern, wired is still preferable for many reasons over wireless.

[Ken300D]

JCE - Thanks for the info and links.

One thing you can do on a small wireless network to keep other people off is to enter all the "approved" MAC addresses from the wireless cards into the table most access points have available.

So, you're not on the list you don't get associated (attached).

Doesn't solve the data confidentiality issues but keeps the kids off your bandwidth.

Ken300D