More Abstracts

We are a house of four internet users and each month we pay for internet connection and most months it costs more than it should be due to the fact that 'someone' has downloaded more than they should. 'Someone' is always nameless because 'noone' actually did it. This left us wondering - did 'someone' actually download lots or do we have 'someone' helping themselves to our wireless network?

Being as our network is secure and the password is not one that is easily remembered (with the exception of one of us) and certainly wouldn't be easy to guess, the chances of anyone working out what it was and helping themselves to our bandwidth is not likely. So the obvious answer is to get a router where we can monitor and even restrict how much bandwidth each user gets. By doing this we can identify who 'someone' really is and indeed if 'someone' is more than one person!

Ok so we install monitoring software and now I can no longer upload my blog photos from my laptop. No I am not 'someone',  but the monitoring has effectively slowed my laptop connection which is down the other end of the house and goes through a second router to get wireless to the first. Yes we have the ability to slow down connections now but this is happening without that being set. Somewhere the connection has slowed down between the two routers.

Last night I thought I would set up our new wireless vodem that we got for when we travel and upload via that and wouldn't you know it... it didn't work! Ring the help desk and get told to go back to the shop as they had not keyed it into the system to be activated. So until the connection is sped up, or the vodem is activated my blogging is restricted to my main computer. The upside to this is that I usually write more at this computer so you will get more to read!