28 Mar, 2007
Orange “Live Box” ADSL modem / wireless router
Posted by: Mark In: hardware| networking
At the weekend I installed the Orange Live box for my in-laws. They were already on Orange broadband, and their old netgear wireless router had died so the FIL decided to take a deal from Orange & upgrade to the Orange live box.
As soon as I popped the installation CD into the PC I hit a problem, it didn’t matter what option I hit the cd opened the help box. After much swearing and head scratching I discovered that the software on the Orange installCD is not compatible with the Adobe Flash 9 player. This is frankly ridiculous, I can’t believe that Orange have sent out a disk without testing it against the latest version of the player. I think that’s unacceptable.
Anyway, once I’d un-installed flash 9 installation is a doddle, the wired connection is (if I remember correctly) automatic. For the wireless installation, you first install a client on the computer you want to connect wirelessly, then put the Live Box into “pairing mode” by pressing a button on the router and then search for the wireless network and enter the WEP key printed on the bottom of the Live Box. All pretty straight forward.
The Live Box has a USB port for connecting to a PC, I used one of the two Ethernet ports. It also has a phone socket which allows you to connect a telephone and use the Live box to make VOIP calls,this is something the in-laws may want to do later.
Overall, I was quite impressed with the Live box; I like the way that all the admin & set up stuff is handled automatically, for most home users that’s be great. I’m not sure if it’s possible to do more advanced stuff like reserve IP addresses or set your own SSID, I’ll have a look into that next time I’m at the inlaws. I think it could also use a couple more Ethernet ports, we used the two available up straight away by connecting to the desktop PC and a netgear printserver.
