[ale] Inexpensive broadband recommendations

[John Wells]

The easiest way to go is to order the "external ethernet modem" from
BellSouth when you sign up.  In my case, that was the Alcatel @home.  It
may have changed...this was over a year ago.

Anyway, you'll need the external ethernet modem and a machine with a NIC
to connect to the modem.  It's preferrable to setup this machine as a
firewall/router, and Smoothwall (http://smoothwall.org) handles this quite
nicely.

If you choose to go this route, you'll need a low powered (486 or better,
but at least 16 mb (preferrably more) of ram to apply their patches.  I
run smoothwall on one of my firewalls with only 16 mb of ram and have only
had a problem with one of the patches....I was able to work around by
applying it manually, but to make your life easier you'd probably want the
extra ram.

You'll need at least two network cards in this r/fw box (three if you want
to run your own web server/mail server...iow, a DMZ).

>From there, installation and setup is pretty easy.  Once you get the
hardware in place, and assuming you have network cards that are commonly
supported under linux, you can be up and running in under an hour.

It's worth noting that you can get around using a firewall/router by just
setting up iptables or ipchains on your desktop and plugging your desktop
machine's nic directly into the modem....using roaring penguin to control
the connection, but I use multiple machines on my home lan and like having
that extra layer between me and the net.  It's up to you and your
capabilities as far as hardware goes.  If you just want to use your
desktop machine, all you need is the external ethernet modem and a working
NIC.

John


Grady Harris said:
> I sure would appreciate that.
>
> Hardware:
> Starting from the phone jack & working back, what are the pieces along
> the  circuit?



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