A vet asks me to help set up broadband in his office.

I get there and it starts looking complicated. The computer is plugged into an ethernet hub, as is another computer, and the printer (all with a huge mass of wires behind the front counter). He also has a d-link wireless router / modem / 4 port ethernet router, which he wants to use to connect to ADSL.

After some mucking around, I realise that he already has adsl at the main residence, and the surgery is running on the same phone line… a quick check, and, yep, you really cannot run 2 adsl modems on the same phone line.

Getting adsl to the office is more important. After some experimenting, I find that there is a problem with the office phone line… the modem drops out all the time; its really not useable. But it seems that the house broadband works quite reliably.

I also take a look at setting up a wireless laptop (a toshiba satellite psa10a-01m7lp) … its a pentium 4 'm' and it has a wireless switch on the front, so it should have wireless. Shouldn't it?

I go to the control panel network settings, and I only see the wired adapter… hmmm. Is it turned off in the bios? No. I leave it, and since its getting late, I arrange to return another day, and get everything going.

I do some research later on, and I find that the laptop only has a wireless antenna… the actual wireless board is an optional extra. How useless is that?