On Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:33:41 -0700 (PDT) in jankey wrote:
-giggle-

long story, but the issue is internet connectivity in the house.
housemate needs to hog most of the bandwidth for his job (which is
fine. no problem). cable company is claiming we need to rewire the
house in order to get a clean enough signal to be able to use 2
computers and at least one tv. (right now we can use one tv (mine)
and one computer (his) at the same time, after having sacrificed the
proper number of root vegetables to the appropriate gods/goddesses and
spinning in circles counterclockwise on one foot for 30 seconds under
a quarter moon. whole other ritual for the full moon. no
connectivity under no moon. ;-)

Sounds like a load of hooey to me.
If you can get one cable modem working, you can stick
a consumer grade wireless router on it and connect every computer
in the neighborhood to it.
The reason I suggest a wireless router is that Best Buy sells them
for slightly less than a router without wireless. It doesn't make
any sense as the wireless routers have everything the wired routers
have plus a radio transciever.

If the wiring and plumbing and neighbor's microwave oven kill off
802.11B/G(wireless)... Walmart sells 50foot ethernet cables for about $20.
They're quite nice because you can still close the windows when you
run the cable window to window to connect rooms :-).

so i'm not going to get a machine until we have a good signal (we just
can't face getting the (rented) house rewired at the moment.
housemate, a technogeek, is threatening to get a wireless transmitter
thingie), so 'til then, i'm a workplace user (only when i'm not busy,
boss, really).

I wouldn't rewire the entire house. I'd just disconnect the house
wiring, run a length of coax from the cable interface box
through the window to the room that the TV belongs in, and run
an ethernet cable to each computer. I had to do it in 2006
when I started living in sin with the woman who is now my wife.

My roomates did it in 1995 to steal cable from the neighbors...



--
Chris Dukes