Morgoth said:
Interference: you said you're sharing a house. I assume that means a single family detached home. That means the only possible interference you'd have would be coming from inside your house. You want to take into account other wireless devices like phones or remotes. Other devices like microwaves could cause interference but that depends on the quality of the device you don't want to be interfered with.
Yup, single-family home and WAY detached. Nearest neighbors are 1/4 mile away, which is a bummer because in my youth I could shoot my deer rifle safely in any direction
In the house are a microwave and 2 cordless phones, neither of which is top-end or very new.
Line Sharing: For a concise answer, you need to provide us with the speed of DSL you're getting and what type of net activities your non-gaming roomies do. Do they just do web, email, and news?
I have no idea what the DSL speed will be. It's not here yet, it's just on the horizon. I'm just trying to get ready for it when it eventually arrives
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I'm the only bandwidth hog. Mostly I do email, read messages boards, and have ICQ running although mostly not in use. Several times a week, however, I play AH and/or TCP/IP games. Nobody streams anything, nor downloads porn. One of my roomies uses the net every day, but only for email and looking at stock prices, and that only when I'm not home. The other only uses the net 3 or 4 times a week and only for email, but during the time I'm home.
This is, doubtless, subject to change. If prior experience with other things is any guide, excess capacity doesn't exist in practice
. So once we get broadband, I wouldn't be surprised if one or both roomies started streaming or otherwise upped their bandwidth use, because now they can. However, I am certain neither will ever do any online gaming.
For that last reason, efficiency between PCs isn't anything to worry about. We're not going to be playing anything together and we're not going to be having LAN parties. In fact, it might be nice if intra-network communications were inefficient so they can't spam me when I'm trying to fly
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As stated, I know next to nothing about any of this. However, like Grimm deduced, I know just enough to be aware that hybrid networks are possible. And I really, really don't want to run any wires, not only because that would be a pain to do, but because prior experience has shown wires in this house don't last long due to rodent teeth. So if I could hook my roomies up wireless, while not adversely affecting my AH connectivity, I'd be really happy.
I really don't know what exactly a "shared connection" means, nor what it implies for networking and AH connectivity. All I know for sure, because I'm drinking buddies with one of the phone company guys who's installing the DSL stuff in the area, is that there will be only 1 internet connection per house, so if you have multiple PCs there you have to "share" it.
Thanks to all for the advice so far.
