Broadband Packages

Now a days   there are various offers  from many companies to provide a combined package of TV, broadband and landline. Virgin Media was the first to include a mobile service also in the package. They offer four for  £40. There are many options. For example one can . break it down into individual components and just take two for £20, For a normal user a medium option  comes with 39 TV channels, 2Mb broadband, free weekend calls to landlines and 200 free minutes. The  option for heavy users has 83 channels, 4Mb broadband and free evening and weekend calls as well as 400 free minutes. Virgin Media also announced rolling services  that enables to reach the noncable areas in 2007
Sky too had launched a  three-product bundle, Surf, See, Speak  for £26 a month. The overall cost is £37. The equivalent offer of Virgin is a three-for-£30 package that includes medium broadband, phone and large TV. This package is  £7 cheaper than Sky, although the latter provides 8Mb broadband compared with Virgin’s 2Mb and offers more TV channels. Sky also provides  a wireless router and free calls to landlines in the evenings and weekends, whereas Virgin offers free weekend calls only.
Both  these firms have a premium package for high-end users.
 Sky offers TV with all its premium-rate sports and movie channels, free evening and weekend calls to UK landlines and 16Mb broadband for £74.50 a month
Virgin has a VIP (Very Impressive Package) deal that  costs £85 a month without a mobile element and comes with a similar TV package. But the company offers free landline calls at any time. The broadband speed is only 10Mb. The VIP Complete package included a TV mobile with 500  minutes and 1000 texts, international calls for £125 a month and a premium of  £60 worth.
The general view is that  Virgin’s basic offer is competitive. “The four-for-£40 product can deliver savings of £370 a year compared with comparable unbundled services” However there is a drawback. You have to pay Virgin Media a £25 installation fee for cable products and  once you have made the change to cable, if you ever want to go back to BT, you will have to fork out up to £120
. Tiscali offers 2Mb broadband and a TV service for £14.99 as well as a “triple play” package that will include free weekend landline calls for £19.99. The package  comes  with basic Free view TV channels and a pay-per-view service offering shows such as Lost and Desperate Housewives at 99p an episode.
BT  has the BT Vision, which was that comes with 40 Free view TV and pay-per-view channels; free evening and weekend calls and 8Mb broadband for £33.99 a month with Option 2. They also air exclusive sports coverage from Setanta, an Irish pay-TV service.
For a mid-range user, the Sky package at £37 a month, .  with  more TV channels and a faster broadband speed. seems to be better  If you want a mobile package with the bundle, however, Virgin’s four-for-£40 is better,

Introduction
When there is a single cable modem and if you want to share the modem connection between up to 4 computers, this can be achieved in two ways. One is with a software running on a PC. The other way is with a small stand-alone box, called router. All the standard requirements like DHCP client for the WAN side, DHCP server for the LAN side, NAT (Network Address Translation) are handled by this box and so there is no need for any special computer settings to make this to work. One can also save any extra charges for additional IP addresses, if required to be paid to the ISP by way of using this box..

How to connect ?

The above diagram illustrates the cabling set up for one Modem with two computers through a router box.The WAN connection is limited to 10 Mbps Ethernet. Normally, as most broadband connections never gets over about 1.5 Mbps for any periods of time, it is considered that the connection will operate satisfactorily.

Configuration
The configuration can be done through a set of built in web pages. You can connect to using any standard web browser like Internet Explorer or Netscape. The first page will hold all configuration required by most of the users.

Configuration of WAN side
Router Name – This is equivalent to the computer name in Windows networking set-up as used by some ISP’s.
Domain Name – equivalent to the workgroup name in Windows networking set-up as used by some ISP’s.
Obtain IP address automatically – get the IP address from the ISP through DHCP.
Or Specify an IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway Address and DNS (Domain Name Server) Address – this is required if the ISP uses static IP addresses and not DHCP.

Configuration of LAN side
LAN IP Address and Subnet Mask – sets the range of addresses that are used on the home LAN. Any private LAN should use non-routable addresses in the 10.0.0.0, 172.16.0.0 or 192.168.0.0 blocks.

There is a built-in DHCP server on the LAN side of the computer, hence the computer can get the IP address and set-up automatically through DHCP. This makes it very easy to set up the client computers. Also. Since a laptop computer is being used both at work and at home, it will be able to just plug in, if the workplace is also using DHCP. Reconfiguration of the laptop may not be required .

An example of a link system router is given below (This type of configuration would work with other type of routers also):