Ted Roche wrote: > On 11/7/06, Whil Hentzen (Pro*) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> I've just acquired a line with Time-Warner BizClass. The rationale >> behind it, let's leave that for another time. <s> >> > > So, you've bought a new connection, and you're not going to tell us > why,
I didn't say I "bought" it. And I didn't say I wasn't going to to tell you why, just not NOW. Stop putting words in my mouth. I already have a wife. <bg> or what you plan to use it for, but now you want us to explain to > you how to set it up? As Ethan Hunt says in MI, "It's much worse than that." Actually, there are two reasons... First, remember the scene in Cheers where Sam is making mistakes ordering things, and one day, a delivery guy drops off a stack of 2x4s, a dozen bags of concrete, and a wheelbarrow? Woody bids the guy goodbye after the requisite spirited exchange, then closes the door, looks at all this stuff in the middle of the bar floor, and says, "Well, now.... the only question left is... what am I going to build?????" Same thing here - I have a line. What might I do with it? Second, I didn't want to predispose the answers. It's a long held truth that in survey taking, you first ask, "Tell us everything you liked about X." followed by "Tell us everything you disliked about X." Instead of "Please rate the following nine items on a scale of 1 to 5." If you provide stock answers, you automatically narrow down the answers you're going to get, without necessarily meaning to. So instead of leading people to the answers I wanted them to provide, I wanted a wide open field. Third, I do not know. I might use this as a spare access line in the event that the T1 goes down. I might use it as my main access line, ridding the T1 when contract time comes up. I might use it as a test line. I might move my T1 hosting to this line. I might decide it's a piece o' crap and get rid of it. I do not know. I was looking for a variety of possibilities. :) So there are my two reasons. <s> >> At the end of the line coming in from out-of-doors, there's a box the >> size of maybe six decks of playing cards. The line goes into it, and >> there are four Ethernet ports available. > > Does the box have a name, or writing on the outside that tells us the > manufacturer or the model number? Using that information, we can > probably find the manual on-line and figure out what the capabilities > of the device are. For now, let's call it "the router." It's grey. Does that help? Well, actually, it's a dark grey. Almost a dull black. Shiny on the front, too. Seriously, the box has NO markings, numbers, any ID whatsoever on it. It's small, grey, has six holes on the back (power, 4xEth, USB). Four stickers on the bottom that say "Cable RF Mac Add 20957297348" and a fifth that says that Time Warner will throw me in jail and pull out my fingernails if I even think about screwing with the box. Hence my confusion. And I like my fingernails. >> Tech support says that only one >> is active, but I don't quite believe him, as I can plug a box into any >> of them and get out. > > Tech support may not know what you were provisioned. Then they're not actually 'tech support', right? I did have to give them my account number, and they were able to tell me what my reverse DNS was. I'm expecting that they should know what they delivered to me, else what support are they going to be able to provide. Refer to previous email re MSFT vs Leafe tech support. <bg> >> I've got four static IP addresses. > > Is that what you ordered, or have you confirmed that's what you have? > How did you determine that? Well, cuz that's what I ordered, and I done went ahead and believed them. The bastards! Oh, I feel like such a foole! Oh, I also plugged a machine in, popped in my static IPs (below), and verified that all four do get out to the Web, and report back via www.myipaddress.com. I have a Web server on one of the IPs, and can http:/1.2.3.4 to the server from 1.2.3.5 successfully. > Since you can plug a box in and get to the internet, what IP address > do you get? That's likely showing you that the box is handing out IP > addresses, using DHCP, and it's likely the addresses are non-routeable > (192.168.*.* or 10.0.0.*) and the box is using NAT and perhaps doing > some firewalling. But you tell us: what's the output of ifconfig and > route? I have a block of 4 IPs, 1.2.3.4 through 1.2.3.7. (I think that's four, right?) I lack the self-confidence that many of you have in trusting your HCPs to Mr. Dynamic, and so always statically assign IPs to boxen. So I entered 1.2.3.4 into my static IP for a test box. www.myipaddress.com says I'm on 1.2.3.4. If I do that for 1.2.3.7, I get a similar, warm and fuzzy response. So I that's why I think I'm just getting access to the outside, and my PC needs to provide a firewall - or I need to do 'something else'. >> I'm guessing this box-like thingee is a 'cable modem'. All it provides >> is access outside. No firewall, no nothing, right? > > No, it's more likely a cablemodem-router combination. The modem > converts the electrical signal on the cable to Ethernet. The router > side of the box routes the Ethernet from the modem to each of the four > ports. Depending on the smarts of the device, it may be able to > allocate one IP address to each port or do even fancier stuff. It may > also include a firewall, NAT, DHCP, DNS, logging, content blocking, > VPN support and lots of other stuff. OK, I took another machine down there and hooked it in on a second of the four ports in the back. And a third and a fourth. It looks like all four ports 'work' - i.e. I can connect a machine to the Internet via any of the four, and at least two of the four work at any given time. I don't think the little grey box has any intelligence in it, though. Guess this is one of those "dog looks like the owner" situations, except with Internet connectivity appliances. >> So what do I do now? <s> > > What is it you want to do? Do you have specific plans for what you > want to do with the different IP addresses? Oh, the usual. Online gambling on one IP. Girls, girls, girls, all nekkid, all the time, on another. MMMP DOOM 5, 24/7/365 on a third. And the fourth? Well, that would be a spare. I was considering writing a replacement for google or amazon, but the holidays are coming up and I'm pretty busy... OK, you got me. "I don't know." >> I could hook up a single box that's running a firewall as well. Block >> everything but 80, for example. >> >> I could hook up four boxes, too. But I'm not sure I'm comfortable having >> to mess with four firewalls on four boxes; that begins to become a lot >> of admin that I should be able to handle in a central point. > > All of the IP addresses can pass over the same physical wire, so the > question is what you want to do with them. If the four IP addresses > are to go to different devices, they need to be routed, either using > the firmware in the device you have (the router) or by adding another > device inline. OTOH, if you just bought the four IP addresses so you > could have four separate SSL-supporting domains on the same web > server, you can send all of the packets there over one wire. Or... you > might want to do something else. You'll need to tell us what you plan. 1. I could.... have four boxes hooked up to the four Eth ports on this modem, and set all four boxes up with their own firewalls. The big thing, as I sort through this, is that I don't want to set up four firewalls for four different IPs. That doesn't seem very 'reusable'. Doesn't scale well, either. 2. I could ignore three of the Eth ports, plug a firewall into the fourth, and then plug the other end of the firewall into a router/switch/hub/xmas tree, and then hook my four PCs into aforementioned router/switch/hub. I could go past four PCs if I wanted to NAT on one of the four static IPs, of course, like I do with my T1 now. Remember I'm a mechanical engineer - the EE profs pushed me out the door damn-damn quick, doncha know. So the magic that happens inside - like Vegas - stays inside. I'm just looking at wires coming out of boxes. Conclusion: I think Door #2 is where I'm headed, but I'm still open to other ideas. Whil _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
