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Newbie cable router query

Hi wireless gurus - I'm seeking to dip a toe in the murky depths of the wireless tar-pit, and would be grateful for some guidance.

I'm seeking to link a Toshiba Satellite laptop (3000 series I believe) to a Scientific Atlanta Webst*r cable modem supplied just over a year ago by Telewest (now taken over by Virgin Media). I'm confused by all the network jargon, but hope I've understood enough to imagine that I need a cable router, and some kind of adapter to attach to the laptop. Because the installation is in an old house with solid walls, I'd earmarked a Netgear WPN824 Rangemax for the router, and a WPN511 adapter.

The only worry I have (well, OK, the main worry) is that someone tried connecting wirelessly to this modem before and had problems:

"In theory any wireless router with an ethernet port will do, however I've tried this before and Telewest seem to have setup their system so that you can only connect a PC to their modem, not a router.

So your options are:

  1. Replace the Telewest modem. Something like this claims it will support Telewest:

formatting link

  1. Find a wireless router that will plug into the Telewest modem - you'll have to contact Telewest to find out if they support any at all."

I guess there must be lots of people out there with Telewest broadband and the same modem; if they have a working wireless setup, and it doesn't work for me, at least it narrows down the possible points of failure!

Thanks in advance for any tips,

Dave

Reply to
D.Stone
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What is the model no. of your Scientific Atlanta Webst*r cable modem as some of their modems were USB only and you would not be able to connect a router to it. You could check to see if your modem has an ethernet skt.

Reply to
LR

The label on the side says 'EPC2100 series' and a lot of other mostly unimportant blurb including 'HW Rev 2.0' and date of manufacture

05/06. I connect through it at present via an Ethernet cable.

HTH,

Dave

Reply to
D.Stone

It's possible that the MAC address of the network card in your computer has been registered with your ISP and they will only accept a connection using this. When using a router you can normally get round this by cloning this address or in the case of the WPN824 there is an option to "use this MAC address" where it gives you a chance to enter an address.It may be worth trying this. I would try setting up everything wired before trying wireless.

Reply to
LR

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