On Sun, Jan 07, 2001 at 09:02:21PM -0800, Tom Marshall wrote: | I don't have any experience with DSL, but I can tell you about the AT&T @home | setup. Most of the networking stuff should apply to either, but you | should *insist* on an external adapter with a ethernet connector to your box. | | I've been using a 5x86-133 machine for my linux masq gateway for about 4 | years and it been connected to analog modem, ISDN, and cablemodem in its | day. It never has to work hard, even sustaining close to 1mbit throughput | on the cablemodem, so I would imagine a 486 is just fine. Of course, you | will probably want to do kernel compiles elsewhere and copy the image to the | 486 box. ;-)
Actually, the 486 box isn't mine. It has windows on it and would be connected to the service through my PII 300 with Debian (the masq box). I am hoping to get an old 486 machine sometime and set it up as the masq (& web) server. | | The masq box is setup with two ethernet cards. One is connected to your | DSL/cablemodem and the other to your hub/switch. Setup shouldn't be | difficult if you read the relevant masq documentation. You will probably | want to investigate running some services such as a caching DNS server and | web proxy. It's a nice learning experience and it can improve your network | throughput even more. | Cool. I'll have to look into this. | AT&T @home service uses DHCP but the DHCP server always allocates the same | IP to your box. This is done so that it's easier to rearrange IP addresses | (for them) should they ever need to. However, the technicians are told to | set the machine to the assigned static IP if anything goes wrong (and it's | not uncommon for @home DHCP to be down). I've been using my static IP since | I got the service because their DHCP (and DNS) was down the day it was | installed. | | If you do get a broadband connection, be sure to setup a decent ipchains | firewall script and/or run some sort of intrusion detection system because | the broadband IP ranges are frequently scanned by hax0rs for vulnerable | systems. AT&T @home scans all of their clients for news servers (port 119) | routinely, so whatever you do, don't setup a news server -- even by mistake. | Is there a general disapproval from service providers regarding servers? I wasn't planning on a news server, but I do have a web server and ftp server (in addtion to sshd) on my machine. If possible I would also like to run a mailing list. Thanks (all who replied) for all the great info! -D
