Airtel WiFi Query.

Status
Not open for further replies.
prabs

prabs

Herald
I am planning to shift from wired Airtel connection to WiFi service provided by Airtel. They asked me to send an e-mail to wecare.west@airtel.in mentioning my telephone no. or customer id.

Q.1) The problem is I am only available at home after 10pm from Mon-Sat. I only have a Sunday to spare. Are engineers available on a Sunday?

Q.2) All tutorials I have seen online mention a ethernet wire going into the back of the pc. So if I have a laptop and the wire goes behind the pc, can I keep my PC turned off and still use the wifi n/w?

Q.3)If I format my machine will I have to setup anything or will it be configured automatically like right now where the modem needs no configuration?

Q.4)An article on securing wifi connection was provided October 2008 issue of Chip magazine, is it helpful? If I don't turn on my computer, do the security settings still work?

Q.5)Does Airtel provide the USB Wifi adapter? How good is the range?

Q.6)Will my downloading speed get affected (torrents, limewire etc.)?

The Airtel Technical support was not very helpful.

Please reply.
 
Q.1) The problem is I am only available at home after 10pm from Mon-Sat. I only have a Sunday to spare. Are engineers available on a Sunday? Once I needed a modem replaced and they did that on a Sunday. Also if somebody else is at your place you can just ask them to drop the wifi modem and take the wired one.

Q.2) All tutorials I have seen online mention a ethernet wire going into the back of the pc. So if I have a laptop and the wire goes behind the pc, can I keep my PC turned off and still use the wifi n/w? I setup my modem without a direct ethernet connection - you may need to manually configure the settings on the laptop, go into the modem's setup and enabed DHCP tho.

Q.3)If I format my machine will I have to setup anything or will it be configured automatically like right now where the modem needs no configuration? No configuration needed - all settings are stored in the modem itself.

Q.4)An article on securing wifi connection was provided October 2008 issue of Chip magazine, is it helpful? If I don't turn on my computer, do the security settings still work? Don't know about the Chip article but just enable WPA security and you're set - google a bit if you want more advanced security.

Q.5)Does Airtel provide the USB Wifi adapter? How good is the range? Don't know but their modems itself are not very good - much lesser range than compared to my previous Netgear.

Q.6)Will my downloading speed get affected (torrents, limewire etc.)? I didn't notice any problems - get 32-34 kBps download speeds on my 256 kbps connection.
 
Q.1) The problem is I am only available at home after 10pm from Mon-Sat. I only have a Sunday to spare. Are engineers available on a Sunday?

Talk to a few friends who have an Airtel broadband / telephone connection and ask them for the engineer's mobile number , call him directly and he'll do the work for you even if it is a Sunday!

Q.2) All tutorials I have seen online mention a ethernet wire going into the back of the pc. So if I have a laptop and the wire goes behind the pc, can I keep my PC turned off and still use the wifi n/w?

Yes , you can. It has nothing to do with the ethernet wire going in your pc being on/off (once initial settings have been done and saved into the router). You will be able to use the wireless network till your router is on.

Q.3)If I format my machine will I have to setup anything or will it be configured automatically like right now where the modem needs no configuration?

You will initially need to connect the modem directly to the laptop/computer and do the settings or get it done via the engineer who visits your place.

After that ,

For PC - Yes , you will require to configure a bit.

For Laptop - Just search for Wireless Networks , and you will get it.

Q.4)An article on securing wifi connection was provided October 2008 issue of Chip magazine, is it helpful? If I don't turn on my computer, do the security settings still work?

I'm not sure about this one.

Q.5)Does Airtel provide the USB Wifi adapter? How good is the range?

I'm using the Beetel 440TXI modem. As far as I am aware if you want to go Wireless on Airtel , you require to purchase the wireless modem from them.

Q.6)Will my downloading speed get affected (torrents, limewire etc.)?

Not really , you won't notice the 1-2kbps difference.

Incase if you are into gaming , your latencies (ping) may spike up n down!
 
Thanks for the help guys.

I just sent an e-mail to Airtel and spoke to the folks out there, they told me that they don't provide the usb wifi dongle. I am planning to purchase a usb wifi dongle tomorrow. So I wanted to know 2 things does the router provided by Airtel use 802.11g or 802.11b and how much does it cost?
 
prabs said:
Thanks for the help guys.

I just sent an e-mail to Airtel and spoke to the folks out there, they told me that they don't provide the usb wifi dongle. I am planning to purchase a usb wifi dongle tomorrow. So I wanted to know 2 things does the router provided by Airtel use 802.11g or 802.11b and how much does it cost?
Click to expand...

It's 802.11b and it costs 1,500/-Rs
 
if its 802.11b , then its PITA , speed and range suck , better buy a 802.11g router yourself along with a 802.11g based dongle
 
Pick up a 802.11g dongle, OTOH if your MB has empty PCI slot, buy wifi card instead, it cheaper(linksys will cost 1-1.1k) and keep the USB port free.
 
hey im using airtel also, what I have is just a zyxel router given by airtel before at my house and bought my own netgear wi-fi router, and setup the connection myself.. found it much easier then asking them to change it..
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom