Annie,
OMFG! Good call on turning him down. Geeksquad is a rip off of the highest order! Listen, you bought a Belkin. Use their tech support. Give them a call if you need help. i've not yet seen the interface for the new Pre-N routers, but knowing belkin, Annie, honestly I'd be amazed if you COULDNT get it set up. First thing I'd do if I were you is when you get that box open, look for the setup POSTER. Thats right.. a whole huge POSTER. They usually give you this big fold out poster that is VERY well written and clear. It also has their tech support number on it.
I've had NUMEROUS calls... ( my logs in bluephone elite go back 2 years and it shows 37 different calls to Belkin, not counting my onsite calls) to belkin's tech line. They have never had a problem walking myself or a customer through setups. Great thing about belkin like I said before was that they DO support Macs and do support setting up a mixed network.
Between Belkin, myself and the rest of the guys here I'd be amazed if you took longer than an hour to get things setup. I tell you what, I'll send you my contact info for IM and such if you need help.
I do want to make sure I'm seeing this right.
1. You have a DSL modem going to >
2. Belkin Router>
3. Hooked up to a Windows PC via a network cable **network cables are also called ETHERNET or CAT5 or CAT5E**>
4. You have a Macbook that you want to hook up via wireless
If thats all right, let me know.
Basically here's what i tell my customers who do this.
Get the box opened. Pull out the paperwork and all the parts.
In the box you will have 3 physical parts to use.
a. Router
b. power supply for router
c. 1 network cable
Ok now you want to get the poster open and just read it for a minute. Read the whole thing so that you know what to expect. If you read the whole thing first before wading into it, you're less likely to have problems.
Once you get it pulled out, what I recommend is making sure you have all your settings for your DSL provider. That will usually be things like your user name and password/ ppoe settings/ server and DNS numbers, etc...
Like I said, dont hesitate to give belkin a call, they'll more than likely know just what you need.
Anyways, in terms of setting up wireless, theres one piece of advice I give people. Put a password on your wireless. The type of password you want is known as WPA-PERSONAL. That means that you dont have a password like AJ5KEKD44KKDI, instead you have a password like BUBBAbabeBOOBOO **the names of my 3 dogs** or you can give it any password you want. WPA Personal means that you give it a password and you can make it something you'll remember.
Some might argue that its less secure than other types, and technically that might or might not be true, but any hacker who's going to hack your network, if he can hack a wpa personal password, he can hack ANY password, therefore isnt worth really worrying about. If he's going to do it, he's going to do it and there wouldnt be anything you could do about it other than shut off the wireless. What you want to do is just keep the neighbors from jumping on and sucking your bandwidth down to nothing. A good long and strong wpa personal password will do that.
But dont worry annie, I'm sure this will all go very smooth.
I'm on skype today as bishopazrael/ on ichat as
[email protected]
If you have any questions or just want to talk about it give me a jingle. I'm in the office pretty much all day today.
Bishop