2 broadband modems in one house
 

Hi Guys {and gals?}, I presently have 1 meg broadband via a ntl modem in my study and recently my daughter started going on line. I bought her own PC for her bedroom and bought a belkin router. I have had nothing but trouble with the signal strengh between floors and walls etc, and it keeps cutting off. Would it be possible to throw in a length of coax and install another modem in her room or would two modems not work on one incoming line ?

Many thanks

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

Having two modems means you pay double the price. The modem would also have to be profffesionally fitted by NTL.

Is there no way of using a wired network instead of wireless if reception is bad ?
Alternatively, you could try a different signal setting on the router, but I have never tried this.

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

Theres no technical reason why it can't be done provideing theres sufficient level available.

The stumbleing block may be cust services, I'm not sure whether the billing systems will allow two modems on the same account, but one way round it used to be to have cust services create the second acount at the flat above your property ;) It means having yet another account but its a work around thats been used in the past.

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

instead of running coax, just run a network cable between them. this saves you money and agro

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

And you have the wired / wireless router, you just plug the cable into the back of that router and into the back of her PC.

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

I had another modem installed last Friday for my eldest lad, what we had to do was, open another account in my missus name then all is fine, you have to be carefull though you've not got to much coming into the cable point outside, we had to have another cable run from the box on the street to our house because we were up to the limit, I have NTL phone, TV and broadband. We had it all installed on Friday.

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

as others have said you proably can but you will be charged for 2 broadband accounts as the modem is tied to your account.

would be cheaper to run ethernet cable from the router to your daughters bedroom.

is the wireless lan problem a case of a weak signal or just bad relablity? if its reliablity have you tryed going into the router settings and trying a differnt channel, could be interferance from something like another lan, or a cordless phone.etc.


Some routers support WDS (ud have to check if yours does) which enables you to get a 2nd wireless router and use it a bit like a relay station. But both routers would have to support this.

just a few options for you ;)

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

Thanks for the info lads, I think my best bet is to wire a length of ethernet cable from the router downstairs to the daughters pc upstairs. I take it I could buy a length of this from RS or Maplins along with a couple of connectors and crimping tool ?

Nightwing

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

yeah would have thought so :tu:

could try somewhere like ebuyer but i'm not sure if they sell it like that or if they only do ready madeup ones.

the maximum length for a run of cat5 cable is 100meteres, that should be long enough i would guess, but if not just pop a network Hub somewhere and that would overcome that problem.

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

if you dont want to crimp it yourself just find your local cable supplier and ask them for an X meter length. it will only take them a sec to make you one.

i did this, i ended up with a 22m cable :)

anything up to 10m you'll find on the shelf at 99% of computer suppliers tho.

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

I found ebuyer and Amazon were the cheapest suppliers of ready made ethernet cable.

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

ebay might be another option for the network cable, as long as the seller has a good feedback rating you should be ok...

some small bussinesses .etc sell on ebay so you might be able to get a cable made up to the lengh you require (usefull if theres no local cable supplier in your area)

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

your router doesnt seem that far away from your daughters PC...I have my router in my loft and it works all the way down into the cellar and to the botto m of the garden - your problem could be that your neighbours could have wireless routers as well? If they have security set up you won't know. Might be worthwhile setting your router to a channel other than the default first to see if that helps before buying and running cable all over the house?!

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

The more elegant solution would be to buy two CAT5 sockets and the cable, wire them together and screw them to the walls. Then get two short patch cables to plug into those.

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

This sounds like a good option to look at before running cable through the house. If this doesn't work, you can always consider cable later.

Re: 2 broadband modems in one house
 

Or also looking at the position in the room. I found the metal case of my PC crippled the wireless signal, moved it to a shelf and have great range.