Rob Morley wrote:
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:42:20 +0100
Ted wrote:

Thanks for all that - very helpful.
One last(?) question: Will replacing the wired connection
with a wireless change the settings that applied to the
wired connection, that is, if I decided to abandon the
wireless and revert to the wired connection, would it just
be a matter of plugging in the wired modem again or would
setting up the the wireless connection have changed the
wired connection settings in the process? I am just trying
to understand what's required for a fallback plan.

Do you mean will it have changed the settings on the laptop? The
Ethernet and WiFi interface each have their own settings, so if you
switch off the wireless hardware (most laptops have a switch on the
side for this) and plug in a cable it will use that connection. If
both are active at the same time I don't think there's an easy way of
telling which connection will be used, but one or the other will be.

I wasn't clear - I meant the pc. To set up the wireless lan,
I need to connect the wireless router to the pc via cable in
place of the cable connection the pc now has to the modem. I
was wondering what would be entailed in terms of setting
changes etc if I later wanted to change back from a wireless
router connected by cable to the pc to a modem connected by
cable to the pc.

Re your reply above, I had tried connecting the laptop to
the modem but I couldn't get an internet connection. However
I wasn't aware there was a wireless switch but I've now
checked and I see there is and it was 'on' so that probably
explains why I didn't get a connection (at least I hope it
does)!

When I turn on the laptop (still as out of the box), I have
3 adapters showing in Network Connections:

- Wireless
- 1394
- Local Area Lan (ethernet)

The first 2 are showing as 'connected' (from someone's
leaking router somewhere) and the last one is showing as
'unplugged'. I can understand the Wireless and Lan but am
not clear what the 1394 connection is and why it is showing
as connected along with the Wireless.

Ted