Ian

If networking is not built in, you neeed to fit a 100Mbps ethernet card (< 10) in each computer. You will also need a network hub/switch and an ADSL router with an ethernet connection. The router and the hub can be purchased as one unit.

Make sure that you get an ADSL router that has a reasonable firewall some of the cheaper ones only have a NAT firewall which is not really good enough.

I have used the Netgear DG834G router which I can reccomend I'm told that Linksys do a good one but have not tried it. The Netgear one is a 4 Port hub and wireless router combined. Although you have decided (rightly IMO) to use a cable connection, you would not be paying much for the wirless part and it can be useful for occasional laptop or PDA connections.

With a combined router/hub, all you have to do is plug in the cables from your computers and the telephone line. Setup of the router is straight forward but read the instructions. The router will have a DHCP service which will send the correct settings to your computers so setup of them is easy. You will then have to set your internet explorer connection setings to use never dial a connection and use your LAN.

For connecting between the computers and your hub you can either buy some long network cables or fit some wall sockets near the computers and hub with permenant Cat 5 cable between them. The latter is neater but more trouble to set up, if you do this, don't bend the cable too much and make sure the connections are neat and good.

I have the Netgear DG834 router Iain, which is the non-wireless version of the DG834G. Haven't looked up the difference in price but if it isn't a great deal as Optimist says you might as well have the facility for the future.

Iain, I have a 3Com Officeconnect wired/wireless router modem which works well, I think any of the big names are worth buying. FWIW if you look at the various models on ebuyer.com people have added their ratings comments about ease of use / setup etc - I looked at this a lot before deciding which to buy.

Cheers All
Found a decent site for the stuff.Time for more shopping
http://www.dsl-warehouse.co.uk/

Ian - Big Al posted good site a few months ago, but can't find it now.

this one also: http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/default.asp

Running an old Celeron 400 on the PC I've given to the children. My son thinks it's really slow, is there another processor I can stick in to upgrade it significantly or is it a case of buy a new base unit?

SC

The best thing to do would be to put more memory in.

If you want to upgrade the processor it should be possible but you need to find out which ones your Motherboard will accept. I assume that it is a Pentium 2 Celeron. If that is the case, some of them were mounted on a daughter board that fitted into the proccessor slot which would also take a faster ful Pentium 2 if you can find one.

The other thing to bear in mind is that you can buy used P3 boxes for around 80.

Optimist, I've got loads of memory - I think the best thing is to replace the whole box with a used 1GHz system or something like that. I've added memory, gone for a bigger HD etc and still have a slow machine. Maybe it's time to just stop throwing money at it. Bloomin' games developers. The kids want to use my machine and that's just not on!!

ebay here we come.

SC

You may well be right especially if they are keen on games, your box probably can't be upgrades to the latest graphics cards.

If you ditch it, it could be configured as a great firewall.

Good idea, however I have a firewall in my broadband router / modem so not sure if this is neccessary. Can anyone enlighten me?

SC

You could probably build a better one but if you have a good quality router then it is most likely adequate.

Thanks.

New Question:
My 12 year old son wants to create his own web site.Where does he start??
Ive got Frontpage and some web space from pipex.What else will he need and are there any good sites that explain how to do it.Very Simply(For me,not him)

Iain - I found the tutorial in Frontpage essential - my old web pages were done in Word, FP is very different. You can play endlessly and borrow bits from other web pages you like without any html knowledge - just have fun and keep it simple to start and results are easily achievable quickly. Obviously you need the upload address for access to your web space when the time comes. I'm still using a Terrapin ftp programme for this on the "if it aint broke principle but I'm sure FP has it own upload/file transfer built in.

You can upload simply using Internet Explorer these days. Just open an IE window to the FTP address and drag and drop the files into it from Windows Explorer.

Cheers Kayak.
Whats that Terrapin programme like.Cant get my head round frontpage as yet

Iain - terapin is just a file transfer utility - not a web builder see www.tpin.com
Thanks Kayak - never knew that.

Iain/Kayak.ftp via explorer has worked for a while I always used to use it until I realized how slow and error prone it is, I use WS-FTP Pro now but its overkill for basic web pages just nicer to use.

Ive got Dreamweaver as well.Any Good?
I really dont know where to start to help my lad,He wants to start a Nirvana fan web site.He looking for me to get him started!!!!
Ive got the dsl web space via Pipex but get the error message "This user has not yet uploaded their index file.(index.htm,index.html or index.shtml) How do i do that?????
Confused of Bury ;-)

Iain, the error is because there are no web pages to show, by default browsers looks for index.htm or index.html when you enter a site address so for example when you enter www.flying.demon.co.uk it looks for the file index.htm and loads that.

Its just saying you need to load the pages into your web space (using ftp). ISPs have differing procedures for making the web space visible with some it will be visible immediately but that is not always the case.

I don't know anything about dreamweaver but you need to create basic html type pages and not fancy ones at the moment, if you go for more fancy pages later you will need to check what Pipex allow as some pages need server side stuff as well.

That's the limit of my web design expertise !!