Fiber optic- help to set up wireless home


  1. Posts : 19
    Windows 7 Home Premium
       #1

    Fiber optic- help to set up wireless home


    We'll be moving into a home that have fiber optic wired in. The problem is that I don't have a specialized jack to hook up my desktop PC in my own office. I find it'd cost me an arm and leg to install a jack. While researching fiber optic, I also learned that I don't need a modem in order to have a connection. I currently do have a Belkin Wifi router for my husband's laptop and our kindles. But I've bought an ASUS router and thought to plug into a jack in one of the rooms and make it the central focal point and have USB adapters in our computers to link to the central wifi router, as well as our kindles and phones.

    The focus is on my desktop computer, however. I have a Dell Inspirion, Win 7 Home Edition (I believe I have SP2) I'm not sure if I have a specialized ethernet card or a built-in wireless connection in my PC. If I don't have that, is it possible to use an USB wifi adapter that I can plug into my computer? How do I go about getting connected wirelessly?

    Hope this makes sense!
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  2. Posts : 168
    7 Ultimate SP1 x64
       #2

    I've never heard of a residence being wired with fiber-optics before. Yes, the main service lines from the street to the actual service box... but not within the actual house itself. There's no benefit, being it's such a short span of run to everything from the main service point/coaxial lines. Too, there's almost certainly nothing you have that will actually be able to benefit from it (i.e. 'enterprise' grade equipment, or which is itself fiber-optic). What really makes fiber-optics necessary in certain applications, is a very, VERY long span of run (such as the tens of miles from your ISP, through the city, to property service/droplines). Otherwise, within spans of a few hundred feet, the standard coaxial and Ethernet will do the job just as well.

    We have FiOs, their big ugly service panel in the garage snaking lines out to everything else, the modem/router (yes, definitely necessary) and from that standard CAT6 Ethernet. We still get our 50mbps up/down of our 'service tier', despite that, and it wouldn't be one iota better even if we did spring for fiber throughout the house proper.

    Oh, and the ISP/Cable provider you go with will be the ones to establish any new coaxial lines or 'splitters' to route new access points to their equipment (if necessary). That should all be included in your activation price. None of this you should do yourself/through a third-party entity. You won't even be able to get your modem functioning on their network without one of their techs activating it, anyway (true story, even upgraded equipment issued by the ISP, must first be activated by their tech department before it will actually work. Cannot be done by you. At least, true of Verizon. YMMV).

    What no ISP will do, is route your Ethernet. If you want fancy internal lines in your walls with jacks and the rest, you do it yourself or pay another company to do that for you. No ISP does this.

    That all said, yes... you can establish WiFi to a desktop with a USB 'dongle' (providing that your modem happens to also be a wireless router. Otherwise, you will need to get a router and patch it to your modem). However, I don't know why you would want to do that. You'd essentially be cutting your internet speed by half, if not a third, using WiFi instead of running a line of CAT5e or CAT6 Ethernet between your modem and your desktop. Believe me, that ~500-700mbps is well worth the hassle of potentially having to route the CAT5e/6 through a wall or two (that is, if your modem/router has to be out of the room you'd prefer your office to be in... dictated by where the main service lines enter into your house from). I've even switched my notebook to LAN because of that. Far, far better.
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