Can someone give me a bit of background about wireless?
I'm fairly computer literate, but no expert on PC's, so something that doesn't treat me as a complete moron or as a geek would be appreciated!!
I'm just trying to get a bit of background about how things connect on my wireless internet so I can understand what might be required if I have problems.
I currently have a Wanadoo (now Orange) livebox. When this arrived, I followed the instructions in the pretty book to the letter and all worked OK, such as putting in the WEP (which was printed on the livebox itself) and my ISP signon details. There was also some software that used to run which seemed to manage the connection, and has a status bar that was green if it was OK, and red if the connection had dropped out. While this software was running, Windows would not let me do anything with the connection as it said it is managed by third party software.
Following some problems with the connection, and a very frustrating call to Orange's help line, I ended up with the connection being established through Windows and this third party software no longer runs - I'm not exactly sure why, but everything works fine at the moment.
My question is really about replacing the hardware. If I were to buy a new wireless router with a broadband modem and plugged it in, what do I need to do to connect it? Presumably Windows would see this new network, and I could connect to it, and it would then expect a WEP key? Where does that come from, is it supplied with the router?
And having connected, how do I tell the router what my broadband signon details are? Is there an admin function that I can use to do that?