Hi All,
I have just finished a web streaming gig where I had to fight Telstra to get a functional Internet connection and the account set up as I had asked for 3 months ago, and confirmed 2 weeks ago. The client shall remain nameless, but Telstra shall not. They suck. Plain and simple. And really hard, at that!
Let me not be taken the wrong way here - the linesmen (telstra techs) that we had onsite were excellent. They knew their stuff and went out of their way to solve our issues. If it wasn't for them, and their almost blatant disregard for the administrative nightmare known as Telstra, the job would never have been able to be done.
(I will get to the point in a sec, but first some background).
I asked for a connection to the Internet of at least 128kbps (upstream) as I was streaming a multi-bitrate (mbr) Windows Media stream from onsite to a server located elsewhere. I also asked for an internet acount with 4 usable static IP addresses. I also asked for the use of their Windows Media Server. Telstra was a major sponsor for this conference, by the way.
What I got was (originally) a 400Mbps downlink/56kbps (dialup modem) uplink - after explaining that the idea of streaming an event to the world is that you send data from the site to a server, and that a 56kbps modem will give me a total upstream bandwidth of 33kbps, they finally understood that a mbr stream of 100kbps would not fit down a crappy 33kbps dialup. "Oh", they said. "How about we install a 128kbps ISDN connection and let you use that?" This was 2 weeks before the gig, and I confirmed that this would be a better idea. :-) "Don't forget the static IPs I asked for!"
Next, we arrive onsite and find that hey are using the Entertainment Centre's ISDN link - they decided against pulling another one thru because it would have cost them oo much money (I'd guess about 1 hr of Technician time). Fine, ISDN is ISDN (OnRamp is OnRamp - whatever). We get the Cisco 2516 connected and all is running fine at our end. Then we dial the destination. Hmmmm - the first channel connects fine, but the second fails to connect. Hhhmmmm... Check the IP, disconnect and reconnect - recheck the IP - "Oh! Changedeth has it" said I. "This may not be helpful to our cause" said I. After checking a couple more times, and determining that we had a single channel connecting, the second channel dialing, connecting, failing authentication and trying all over again, I decided to phone BigPond Direct (Telstra's ISP) and confirm the account details AGAIN.
Lo! We had a standard dialup account - one connection (no multilink) and dynamic IP assignment (one only). "Not happy, Jan" I said to the BPD technician. And after about 3 hours of explaining the idea behind static/dynamic IPs, and the fact that this was a Telstra sponsored event and they'll look like the silly cows they really are if this doesn't happen NOW, I decided to pull the Telstra Account Manager away from his desert (definately gaining his attention) to explain the the Tech that "No" was not acceptable.
Eventually, we had to accept a temporary "No" and pursue the matter in the morning. Bugger. Leaving a lot out now, to save you from the pain we had to suffer, :-) we basically told them to shove it in an appropriate orifice and install an ADSL connection - "Not a chance of getting it installed in one day" we were told. Six and a half hours later, the ADSL connection was up and running - same day service from Telstra - UNHEARD OF!!!
Now, back to the real world (and glad that is off my chest), I decided that I want to configure a Linux box to take the place of the AU$10,000-odd Cisco 2516 that we were using for this job (until the DSL went in).
I am going to be configuring a system with an ISDN card, a 4-port NIC, a floppy drive and I'll probably install a hard drive and CD-ROM in the box to make my life easier. I have looked around for the Intel 4-port Server NIC, but it seems to have been deleted (or only a figment of my imagination). I have a source for the D-LINK DFE-570TX 4-port 10/100 NIC, which I believe uses the Tulip (DEC/Intel) drivers, and need to locate an appropriate ISDN card. This will all be going into an MSI 6215 NLX computer (nice little box) to make it easy to transport.
There is a major issue with the Cisco routers - they will not NAT incoming TCP connections - almost useless for this situation as the Windows Media Server (WMS) makes a http connection on port 7007 to the Windows Media Encoder (WME) to access the stream. Of course, as the stream is UDP, this can be port forwarded, but not any incoming TCP connections. :-( So, basically, we need a MINIMUM of 3 live IPs for streaming thru a Cisco - 2 for the router and 1 for the encoder. This, as you have read, can be a bugger to get sorted when dealing with Telstra.
There is an easy way around this issue - build a Linux/BSD-based router, and use it to firewall. NAT and port-forward all that is needed. Cheaper than a Nabisco router too! The 4-port card would be configured as Port-1 for the encoder, Port-2 for a local LAN, Port-3 for an "Internet Cafe", and Port-4 for conection to another LAN/ADSL router/whatever (if the Internet connection is not an OnRamp ISDN connection). This will make it possible to allocate set bandwidth to the encoder, and have the rest available for the rest of the LAN segments - the encoder is the highest priority device.
Now, if anyone here has had experience with the DFE-570TX, or ISDN cards in a LEAF box, could you please let me know your experiences. I have ready access to everything I need for this, except an ISDN connection (however, I'm sure I can locate one when I need to test the ISDN configuration). If anyone has any configuration hints for me, they'd be appreciated.
I'll probably base this on ES2B (or the latest version still in the pipeline), however if Oxygen would be a better base for this sort of functionality, I'd be willing to look at that. (I am currently running a couple of ES2B-based LEAF boxes in different places, and am more confortable with ES than O2.)
Regards,
Hilton Travis E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Manager Telephone: +61-419-792-394 _--_|\
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Quark Computers \_.--._/
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