Sincere question...How do I get WiFi in our home?

[Laurie]

My son just asked me if we can get WiFi because his university will be doing online classes for awhile.  

We have one desktop computer (Dell)  in the house that is connected to the internet.  He has his own laptop that he takes to school and he uses their WiFi but when he's home he uses the desktop.  He told me that the university has purchased Zoom (which means nothing to me either except for hot cereal).

Do I buy something?   Do we need to have something installed by our phone company/internet provider (Century LInk)? 

Thanks for your help!     

 

 

 

 

[73349]

You need something to connect to wirelessly, such as a wireless router (maybe $50) or a phone that works as a hotspot (which may be expensive in data used).

Edited October 2, 2020 by Carolina Wren

[Pen]

What is your basic internet source?  If you only have an old phone dial up modem type connection you probably can’t realistically run WiFi from that.  

If you have satellite service, or some wired service you should be able to do so.

I am not familiar with Dell capabilities, but some computers can themselves give a WiFi hotspot for another computer.

Other times the modem or router for your internet service will give WIFi or you can get one that will do so. 

If you have cellphone service that includes hotspotting, some cellphones can give a WiFi signal for a computer.   (My old low end tracfone couldn’t, but our iPhone can)

 

Edited March 13, 2020 by Pen

[Guest]

We are in a house that has no cable-based possibilities for WiFi; we can only use satellite-based WiFi. What we use is a MiFi unit available at Verizon. This is a small device that has a phone number and a data plan. It is “unlimited,” but after a certain amount of data has been used, it is slower for the remainder of the month. 

If you have a smartphone with a data plan, you can use the phone as a hotspot, which the Dell can connect to for WiFi. In your phone settings, there is a place where you can turn on the hotspot and then from the Dell, your son can choose that WiFi option (mine says something like Verizon iPhone) and put in the password on your phone, which can be remembered and will always work afterwards. 

In my house because of our bad internet situation, we use data on mutiple sources, plus the MiFi unit. My ipad and dh’s ipad have their own data plans so we’re not using up the MiFi data all the time. 

I hope that helps. 

[Arcadia]

We are using Xfinity (Comcast) modem linked to our WiFi router. My husband does videoconferencing sometimes in the evening and three of us have online classes. Broadband internet gives us high enough bandwidth for four of us to concurrently hodge the WiFi.

Zoom is one of the software used for online classes. 
 

I have a hotspot but it’s too costly to use the data for video lessons. I use it for emails and texting.

[Guest]

Bumping this to ask @Laurie if she’s been able to figure something out. 

[sweet2ndchance]

Everyone has cover the basics here for you. You will need a wireless router or a wireless router/modem combo. Many cable companies now give the wireless router/modem combo as the baseline unit for internet. Check the modem that you or the internet company should have installed when you signed up for service. It will be a plastic box with lights, usually black, but the cable from the wall will connect into it and a wire from the box will connect to the Dell desktop computer that you have. That box is your modem.

To find out if it already has wifi, look at the lights on the box. If they are labeled, it might say something like "Wifi" or look like an antennae with a circle around it. If it has something like that, you have a wireless router/modem combo. You don't need to buy anything to set up wireless internet. You already have it. Your son should be able to search for your network (the wifi that the router/modem combo is already transmitting) and connect to it. He may need a password. If there is a password, it should have been in the paperwork they gave you at install. If nothing else, call the internet company and they should be able to walk you or him through the process and get his laptop connected at home.

If your modem is just a modem and doesn't have WiFi routing capabilities, you can ask the internet company if they offer a combination box that they will install for you or you can buy your own wireless router and install it yourself. If you want to buy one, Netgear, TP-Link, Asus and Linksys are all good reputable brands. As someone mentioned up above, it will be in the ball park of $50 to $75 and for your needs. Since I don't think you are doing any thing more than surfing the internet or doing online classes, you could probably just close your eyes, do eenie, minee, mynee, mo with the brands I mentioned with models in that price range and you will be fine. They are all roughly the same if you aren't doing anything specialized with the computer. The good thing about buying the router is that it is yours to keep. When you move or if you change internet providers, you can keep reusing your router. If you buy it from somewhere like Best Buy, you could get them to install it for you as well and show you how to connect to it.

Another option is to hotspot from his phone IF your cell phone provider allows hotspot connections. This is actually the option I use because the cable company doesn't come out this far. I have unlimited data and unlimited tethering (connecting a computer to my phone's hotspot wirelessly and my computer uses my phone's data). It does slow down after you hit a certain threshold but it really doesn't affect us too much and we are what they call "super users" because we use more data than 90% of their customers. If he has a phone capable of hotspotting (most newer phones are) and the plan on his phone allows him to share his data with other devices via hotspotting, he just needs to turn on the hotspot on his phone (it will eat the battery like no one's business, best to have it charging while hotspotting) and then look for his phone's signal on his laptop. If he needs to get a different plan provider to be able to hotspot, we currently have post-paid T-Mobile who has no problem with us hotspotting and we were also able to hotspot when we had their prepaid plan as well if he's rather have a prepaid phone. We highly recommend them to anyone, especially if you need internet as well as cell service.

I looked up Zoom and it seems to be a wireless internet provider but if you are happy with Century Link and just need wireless internet for his laptop, there is no reason to switch, there are lots of other options before jumping to a new provider. Colleges almost always have campus wide wifi for students if he wants to just use that for now until you can get wifi working at home. Sometimes they will help students on financial aid with internet costs at home. He should also be able to go to any place that has free public wifi with his laptop. When I was in college, I would often get a milkshake or coffee at McD's and do my homework over their free wifi.

You can have the desktop hardwire connected as it is now and still let your son's laptop connect wirelessly if you have the wireless router. If you want to go completely wireless, your Dell desktop will need a wireless internet adapter or card. There are several options for this that are as easy as plugging it into a USB port to replacing the Ethernet card in the computer with a wireless card (or sometimes you can have both but especially in branded computers, you usually have to replace). With a home wifi network, you can also use your cell phone to make calls over wifi. You just have to have your phones connect to the network and turn on wifi calling. Just trying to think of all the questions I've had people ask when I've helped them set up internet and wifi. If there is something I didn't answer, feel free to ask.

[Laurie]

Thank you all so much for your help!!!

A wireless router is on its way.   Hopefully the signal will reach our basement because my son has already told me that he'd rather be there than on the main floor (could be too noisy).    He'll be taking two classes and teaching two sections of the same class next quarter so hopefully Zoom will be workable.   I told him he should bring the cat downstairs with him and let him be the class mascot and that I'm available for guest appearances.  (The cat has a better chance of being invited.)

Thanks again for taking the time to explain all this to me.  

 

[tonykakkar]

You need to buy good wifi router for him. You will get good under $100 https://www.thecrazybuyers.com/best-wireless-routers/. Once you have it your son would be easily able to access online classes via zoom software on his laptop.

[Pawz4me]

10 hours ago, Laurie said:

Thank you all so much for your help!!!

A wireless router is on its way.   Hopefully the signal will reach our basement because my son has already told me that he'd rather be there than on the main floor (could be too noisy).    He'll be taking two classes and teaching two sections of the same class next quarter so hopefully Zoom will be workable.   I told him he should bring the cat downstairs with him and let him be the class mascot and that I'm available for guest appearances.  (The cat has a better chance of being invited.)

Thanks again for taking the time to explain all this to me.  

 

Depending on the type of router you're getting you may be able to buy an extender or a satellite. They're smallish plug in devices that extend the range of your wifi. I don't know if there are technical differences in an extender and a satellite. When we had an AT&T router they called it an extender; our NetGear router calls it a satellite. But they perform the same function.

[Lanny]

IME if you have Broadband (ADSL or Cable Modem or Fiber Optic) to your house the little box the ISP installs should provide WiFi to your home.  Now, whether or not that signal is strong enough to serve your entire house is another matter and if not you will need to buy some tiny boxes which I will call "extenders" as I am typing this, because I can't remember what they are called and there are different types of them.

Our house has 50 Mbps Fiber Optic service. There is a box where the Fiber Optic Cable terminates in our house. I am probably sitting about 10 feet (there are walls between me and the box.). I am on my Windows 10 Laptop and will see if I can get Speedtest to run on this. I used that earlier this morning, on my Android phone to test the Wifi speed to my phone. Slow at the moment, as it was earlier this morning on my Android phone.  Download was 24 Mbps.  It does vary and I have seen as high as approximately 68 Mbps on my phone occasionally.  WOW,   The Upload Speed was 94.57 so something is not working properly. The Download speed should always be much faster than the Upload speed, for normal Internet use (web surfing, etc.)