Broadband Setup.

[Rostum]

I'm getting broadband soon (ADSL) and I need to know some things. Firstly, I'll have the main computer (which is downstairs) hooked up to the ADSL modem, then I wanted to get two wireless connections (that will go upstairs), they need to connect to a Dell laptop and an iMac. What things do I need to know? Or how would I connect them all up? Any security measures I should take?

Any help would be appreciated.

[crono_logical]

Firewall and Antivirus software on the PC with the modem for certain. Wouldn't hurt to have both on the other machines (if possible), as they also have internet access so can potentially download virus/trojans. And if you have Win2k/XP on the modem PC, you might want to get a few patches for it too to avoid the backdoor that reboots your PC every 5 minutes or so when online - I think the links are still in an old announcement at these forums somewhere :p

Rushed for time to answer, just tell us what OSs are on the machines too :p I'm sure someone else could answer from there, but here's a starting point :p

[Rostum]

Well two computers are running Windows XP and the iMac is running MacOS X, so I don't know if you need to convert anything? Thanks for the starters help crono_logical!

[crono_logical]

Two of them being XP helps :p The easy solution is run Internet Connection Wizard on both of them, set up Internet Connection Sharing on the modem one and follow the on-screen instructions :p As for the MacOSX one, I've not used it before, but from what I know about Windows' ICS, you'll probably need to tell it to get it's IP address automatically (use DHCP or something), and tell it to use the IP 192.168.0.1 for both the internet gateway and DNS server, if you can edit them yourself (you may not have to if you're getting the IP automatically).

There is another method where you use static private IPs on your machines, and should work for any OS on a network, but that's slightly harder to do and has more administrative overhead to set up right (although that's what I use on my network :p ) But try the easy way above first :p