Upc came, broadband engy spoke, I cancelled...but..

*Hank Scorpio*

I think I made a mistake. The engy just wasn't very convincing of the service. I'm in Dublin 5 btw and had ordered 10mb for my home. I have a PC upstairs and ps3/360 downstais in the living room(beside my UPC box). I mainly use my PC for gaming/browsing etc.

Install: When he came he said that the installation would involve hooking up a modem to the tv cables in the living room. He then said you can connect your ps3 to it. For the 360 I told him it wasn't wireless so he said he couldn't do anything for me there(true? Not hugely tech savvy me).

For the PC no direct line would go in but rather a USB stick would pickup the wireless signals from downstairs.

What I wonder is this the standard installation procedure as it left me feeling skeptical if I would have a quality 10mb service(give or take a few mb). The USB stick also put me off since I play TF2 alot and wonder if it would work ok.

Also what of the FREE wireless router? Is that just the standard modem you get or is the FREE router seperate to this?

Could anyone share your experience please as I might get back on to them?

BigEejit

I'm on Virgin Media in the UK but I believe that the engineers here would do the same as over in Dublin.

They come in, install a small splitter box on the cable and connect up a standalone cable modem. They might (if they are not busy) help you set up a wireless router but they definitely do not run ethernet cables from the router to anywhere else in the property.

Did they supply the wireless usb jobby for your main PC upstairs?, very surprising if they did.

mehmeh12

*Hank Scorpio* wrote: »

What I wonder is this the standard installation procedure as it left me feeling skeptical if I would have a quality 10mb service(give or take a few mb).

What is your average broadband download speed? try using http://www.speedtest.net/

*Hank Scorpio*

I didn't install the service yet guys. I told him I was gona think about it more. I'm just wondering does anyone else have 10mb and is this the standard procedure.

He did say for the PC upstairs he would supply me with a USB stick that acts as a reciever to the wireless router(or cable modem) downstairs.

Cabaal

*Hank Scorpio* wrote: »

Install: When he came he said that the installation would involve hooking up a modem to the tv cables in the living room. He then said you can connect your ps3 to it. For the 360 I told him it was wireless so he said he couldn't do anything for me there(true? Not hugely tech savvy me)

.

Yes most likely very true, for most ISP's its not within their support remit to provide support for setting up consoles on wireless.

For the PC no direct line would go in but rather a USB stick would pickup the wireless signals from downstairs.

Thats fair enough,

What I wonder is this the standard installation procedure as it left me feeling skeptical if I would have a quality 10mb service(give or take a few mb). The USB stick also put me off since I play TF2 alot and wonder if it would work ok.

I don't see anything wrong with what the engineer said he'd do or wouldn't do, wireless should be fine for on-line gaming as long as the signal strength is decent...this however depends on the actual constructions of your home/flat and is nothing to do with UPC.

Also what of the FREE wireless router? Is that just the standard modem you get or is the FREE router seperate to this?

Best to ask UPC this question in fairness

*Hank Scorpio*

Opps meant to write for the 360 that it WASN'T wireless enabled.

eightyfish

*Hank Scorpio* wrote: »

I didn't install the service yet guys. I told him I was gona think about it more. I'm just wondering does anyone else have 10mb and is this the standard procedure.

I have 3MB UPC and this is the procedure. We have a 360 and a media server PC wired directly to the router, a Wii, laptop and another PC that connect via Wi-Fi. It all works very well.

(It's the only thing about UPC that works very well!)

*Hank Scorpio*

eightyfish wrote: »

I have 3MB UPC and this is the procedure. We have a 360 and a Wii wired directly to the Netgear router. The laptop and the PC connect via wireless (USB stick in the case of the PC). It all works very well.

(It's the only thing about UPC that works very well!)

Thanks for response.

What doesn't work so well though?

eightyfish

*Hank Scorpio* wrote: »

What doesn't work so well though?

Their customer service.

lambchops

The engineers who do the installs are contracted and most aren't even that tech savvy themselves. They run cables and contact UPC with your modems mac number to get it activated. After that anything else is up to yourself.
Although the engineer who installed mine was pretty good, only person home the day they called was my sister who hasn't a breeze about computers, he installed the modem and seperate router. Setup the wireless on a laptop and 2 PC's that are in the house and left all the router details and wireless wep keys in a text document on my PC.

One last quick thing Sounds like you have the new combined wireless router/modem. This has 4 ethernet ports on the back for connecting devices by ethernet. Just plug one into the back of the xbox then into one of these 4 ports and set up your connection in the dashboard, if the PS3 is also close to it then do the same. I've no idea what USB adaptor they give now but they used to give you a Netgear one that worked way better than the free Netgear router.

The_Conductor

Is the seperate wireless router Wireless N with gigabit ports? What is it? I'm on UPC and they owe me a replacement router- just wondering what their current kitout is.

*Hank Scorpio*

lambchops wrote: »

The engineers who do the installs are contracted and most aren't even that tech savvy themselves. They run cables and contact UPC with your modems mac number to get it activated. After that anything else is up to yourself.
Although the engineer who installed mine was pretty good, only person home the day they called was my sister who hasn't a breeze about computers, he installed the modem and seperate router. Setup the wireless on a laptop and 2 PC's that are in the house and left all the router details and wireless wep keys in a text document on my PC.

One last quick thing Sounds like you have the new combined wireless router/modem. This has 4 ethernet ports on the back for connecting devices by ethernet. Just plug one into the back of the xbox then into one of these 4 ports and set up your connection in the dashboard, if the PS3 is also close to it then do the same. I've no idea what USB adaptor they give now but they used to give you a Netgear one that worked way better than the free Netgear router.

Thanks for this post.

vibe666

*Hank Scorpio* wrote: »

Thanks for this post.

then don't forget to click on the "thumbs up" icon to thank him for it so he gets a brownie point.

Fergus

Just got the 10mb service recently with the free wireless router. It's actually a Cisco EPC2425 combined wireless/4 port switch/EuroDOCSIS cable modem in one unit. Ideally run a cat5 cable directly to one of the four LAN ports on the back of it from your machine to be able to get the full 10mbps. Max speed on wireless depends on your signal quality.

The_Conductor

Fergus wrote: »

Just got the 10mb service recently with the free wireless router. It's actually a Cisco EPC2425 combined wireless/4 port switch/EuroDOCSIS cable modem in one unit. Ideally run a cat5 cable directly to one of the four LAN ports on the back of it from your machine to be able to get the full 10mbps. Max speed on wireless depends on your signal quality.

Its wireless G and the ports on it are 10/100 ports.

If you really want to maximise your potential you should at very least have gigabit ports on it (and wireless N if you have devices which support this standard).

I was looking up the specs on the Cisco router- its optimised for voice traffic. Personally I'd go for a router optimised for gaming (esp. if you've got an XBox or PS3 plugged into it).

I think I'll keep my current kit for another while.......