[ale] Better ISP?

[Ron Frazier]

I lease the cable modem from Comcast.  That way, if it blows up or needs
upgrading, it's their problem, not mine.  You can also get your own, as
Collin indicated.  In my case, I just provided my own routers and PC's.
As I said in another post, I didn't configure the PC's in any special
way.  They just connect to my router.  I would use a router in front of
the cable or DSL modem regardless, unless you're SURE the modem provides
a solid firewall AND you have access to the menus to control it.
Neither is true in my case.

If you get DSL, which comes in on the phone line, along with telephone
calls, you will need to get and place small filter devices on all
telephone outlets which will or may contain telephones.  This keeps the
data from interfering with your phone.  The DSL company may only provide
a few of these, but they're not very expensive.  If you have a separate
phone number and line for data and voice, the filters will not be
necessary.  However, don't plug a phone into the data line.

If you get cable, the modem will connect to the cable outlet with a
standard coaxial cable, just like cable TV.  Your TV's may connect to
the same cable, via splitters if you buy cable TV service as well.  It's
helpful to have a company installer put in all the outlets and check the
signal levels.  You could do this yourself, but watch out for too many
splitters.  Each one drops the signal level at each outlet.  Drop it too
much and both your data and TV could be weak, unreliable, or non
functional.

Sincerely,

Ron

On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 22:37 -0500, Collin Pruitt wrote:
> On 01/05/2011 10:34 PM, Cornelis van Dijk wrote:
> > About the DSL or cable "modem" can I get one at, for example, Fry's,
> > and configure it myself? Or is it part of the installation? One of my
> > older machines has still Windows XP, so I could possibly do the
> > initial setup and then switch to Linux?
> You can use any hardware you want to, so long as it can connect to your
> ISP's network correctly. Unless they're using some really stupid
> security measure to lock in their users to the ISP's provided hardware,
> which I haven't heard of, probably any modem you'll buy will work.
> 

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier

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linuxdude AT c3energy.com