bigjohn Posted February 23, 2003 Report Share Posted February 23, 2003 If you are in range of the phone exchange for adsl, then the adslguide site is the best answer lots of good suggestions and advice - check out their forums As far as modems are concerned, I now understand and concur with the advice that I was given when I started out and avoid USB modems. I have migrated to an ethernet modem/router (even though I only use the 1 machine) and am very grateful/happy that I did, unfortunately the advice came too late as I'd already got a usb speedtouch from pipex. The service is good, and the modem excellent, if you only want to run wind0w$, but it can be a total pain in the arse under linux - search and you will find (and wince/laugh/tremble/etc). regards John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finlay Posted February 23, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2003 many thanks for all the info and advice. It's a pleasure to use a board where you get real replies when you're having a problem/needing info. I'll look into the adslguide site and bear in mind the problem with modems. Finlay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigjohn Posted March 7, 2003 Report Share Posted March 7, 2003 Finlay, Just as a little extra, if you haven't already got yourself sorted the bit that was mentioned about pppoe (if my memory serves me correct is point to point protocol over ethernet - I think - mmay be wrong). To the best of my knowledge, unless you are talking "commercial", then the "cable companies" are going to be the fastest in Uk. Both telewest and NTL both offer a 1 meg service (I don't know about telewest, but the flyer that came through the door the other day said that NTL 1 meg was£34.99 a month). And you are correct in checking the adsl guide for stuff about providers. But, as far as I know, the service that the rest (not cable) are offering is via BT, i.e. they buy it as a wholesale product and retail it to you, the service is not pppoe, it's pppoa (also seems to be refered to as pppoatm - you would have to look around to see what the differences are!) My service is through pipex. I have had no trouble in running it with wind0w$, but you can forget it as far as linux help is concerned. My dual boot set up is wind0w$ XP/mandrake - the modem that I got from pipex was the alcatel speedtouch usb (turquoise cow pat looking thing) which was a breeze with wind0w$, was a real pain to set up for mandrake 8.2, but when I installed 9.0 it wasn't hard at all. The main reason that I changed to an ethernet modem/router, was because dual booting with the speedtouch was quite slow, in that the modem would drop the connection, and then go through the re-initialisation in the other OS. Also, when I was trying to sort out firewalling for my mandrake, for some unknown reason, I kept getting a problem with the software in mandrake (I would get a warning that /usr/share/speedtouch/speedtouch.sh line 150 command 0=0 command not found), and when the problem arose, I could not access/connect and would have to keep going into wind0w$ to look for help - I never did find out how to "cure" the snag and the only way that I found round it was to re-install the OS - a major pain! I used the adsl guide to work out which modem/router was for me, and now use a "Solwise SAR110". I did have to get a network card, but that went "straight in" without any hassle. The wind0w$ set up was straight forward, and because of the problems that I had had, I just rang "technical" at Solwise, they told me what to put into what boxes, and I was sorted. The only thing that took me a while to sort was the harware firewall and IP filters. Solwise have there own forum at www.solwiseforum.co.uk and I found the help that I needed there. I have found solwise to be an excellent company to deal with - very helpful. Hence I now dont have to worry about connections, firewalls, etc at all. I have done all the various security checks that I can think of, i.e. Shields Up, pcflank, etc and my system seems to be secure - I could be wrong, but I am V happy with it. The bit about IP address's, pipex supply me with a Static IP, so it's very straight forward to set things up as far as that's concerned and you wouldn't need to worry about DHCP and so on. Right, I can't think of anything else worthy of mention at the mo, so your serve! (and sorry if any of this post is "teaching granny to suck eggs") regards John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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