[FAQ] fat pipes

[Simon Wistow]

I got broadband working yesterday in my new gaff and I'm so chuffed I'm
going to put my money where my bandwidth is and write a FAQ for the l.pm
website about it. Comments/Patches appreciated.


Q: I want to get boradband put in a t home. Do you have any
recommendations?

A: You basically have two choices - (A)DSL and Cable. We'll deal with
cable later.

First you need to pick a provider. Many people seem happy with Nildram
(http://www.nildram.co.uk) who, whilst they may be slightly more
expensive than some provide excellent technical support. A static IP
will cost you a bit more.

Also recommended is  Andrews and Arnold (http://aaisp.net.uk) who give
static IPS on all products and even /24 networks, will SMS you when the
service goes down and send invoices in text and PDF all PGP signed.

Other options can be found at http://www.adslguide.org.uk/

Once you've picked a provider and a service (including whether or not
you want a static ip which will allow you to contact your firewall
remotely without using DynDNS) then you have to decide whther or not you
want managed or wires only.

Managed services come with (usually a cheap USB) modem and cost a little
per month. The advantages are that if the modem breaks then you get a
replacement plus they set everything up for you. The disadvantages are
that the modems tend to be crappy and it will end up costing more in the
long run.

The alternative is to get a wires only option. This will turn on the
service for you but you'll have buy your own DSL modem. Many people
recommend the D-Link 504 which is a combination router with 4 port
switch and comprehensive web, shell (through serial access) and
application (windows only) configuration. It's a good balance between
features and cost and can be picked up for about 90 quid from Dabs, Scan
and Amazon.co.uk (where I got mine from).

It shoudl be noted that the phone line that the DSL modem is plugged
into will need a microfilter. This looks like a telephone splitter and
protects your normal PTSN phone (and Sky Box or Tivio or whatever is
plugged into the phone line). You shoudl get one with your service but
they're available for about 7 pounds from Scan or about 15 pounds from
shops on Tottenham Court Road,


An alternative to DSL is the much cheaper cable services like
Blueyonder (http://info.blueyonder.co.uk/publish/index.html). These
often come as part of a telvision of phoen package from the same company
and represent very good value. Allegedgly they are faster (on paper)
than DSL although anecdotal evidence suggests other wise. These are
almost always managed services.

Once you've selected your broadband provider you'll want to connect the
rest of your computers up (you do have more than one, don't you?).

Whilst you can just plug everythign straight into the modem this could
be considered harmful even if the modem does have firewalling
capabilities. For about 30 pound you can build yourself a computer
capable of running a firewall (go for the lowest spec possible, you
don't even need a harddrive if you can boot from a CDRom or a floppy).
Then run something like IPCop (http://ipcop.org/) or Smoothwall
(http://www.smoothwall.org). Set up your network something like this.

  internet
 |
 |
modem/router
 |
 | (RED ZONE)
 |
   
  |  Firewall box  |--- (ORANGE ZONE)
    
 |
(GREEN ZONE)
 |
  [ hub ]
  /  |  \
 /   |   \
YOUR PUTERS



Everything in the Green zone will be able to see each other. Anything in
the ORange zone will be able to see each other but won't be able to see
anything in the Green Zone. If you have an Airport or other wireless hub
then you probably want to connect it to the Orange Zone. This means that
people leaching your bandwith cannot h4XX0r the machine in the Green
zone which will probably be wide open because of SMB or whatever. 

If you want all your computers to be using Wireless (which is what I do
since I don't want to run cables upstairs) then stick the Airport in the
Green Zone but configure it only to allow connections from specified MAC
addresses. This isn't perfect but should be a satisfactory balance
between security and convenience.




-- 
: feel the banana karma

Re: [FAQ] fat pipes

[S. Joel Bernstein]

At 30/10/2002 11:15 [], Simon Wistow wrote:

I got broadband working yesterday in my new gaff and I'm so chuffed I'm
going to put my money where my bandwidth is and write a FAQ for the l.pm
website about it. Comments/Patches appreciated.


Okay, here's a comment. YOU ARE REINVENTING THE WHEEL.

/joel


--
S. Joel Bernstein :: joel at fysh dot org :: t: 020 8458 2323
"Nobody is going to claim that Perl 6's OO is "bolted on". Well, except
 maybe for certain Slashdotters who don't know the difference
 between rational discussion and cheerleading..." -- Larry Wall

Re: [FAQ] fat pipes

[Simon Wistow]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 11:20:06AM +, S. Joel Bernstein said:
> Okay, here's a comment. YOU ARE REINVENTING THE WHEEL.

And since when's that ever stopped me before?

Seriously. As previously mentioned the question of DSL provider has
started coming up a lot on this list. It is a question. That is asked
Frequently. A Frequently Asked Question if you will. 

Whilst there are indeed many fine ADSL guides out there we have a
section on the London.pm which is our recommendations in much the same
way that we have pages of book and pub reviews.

http://london.pm.org/about/general.html

Wehn I asked about recommendations earlier Paul asked me if I'd
summarise. Which I have done. I forgot to put in links tp previosu
threads that we've had and also then the prevailing wisdom is that wires
only is generally considered to be the best option because setting up
your router is not at all difficult and it works out much cheaper in the
long run.

However your comments have been taken on board and as of tomorrow
london.pm will be disbanding (there are other Perl communities) and
Larry has been informed that he can stop with Perl6 since, after all,
there are other languages.

Simon

Re: [FAQ] fat pipes

[David Cantrell]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 11:15:15AM +, Simon Wistow wrote:

> Managed services come with (usually a cheap USB) modem and cost a little
> per month. The advantages are that if the modem breaks then you get a
> replacement plus they set everything up for you. The disadvantages are
> that the modems tend to be crappy and it will end up costing more in the
> long run.

You will always have a choice between a USB piece of shit and a proper
ethernet piece of shit.  The ethernet piece of shit is less shitty,
because, errm, it's ethernet and you don't have to do driver voodoo.

> The alternative is to get a wires only option. This will turn on the
> service for you but you'll have buy your own DSL modem. Many people
> recommend the D-Link 504 which is a combination router with 4 port
> switch and comprehensive web, shell (through serial access) and
> application (windows only) configuration. It's a good balance between
> features and cost and can be picked up for about 90 quid from Dabs, Scan
> and Amazon.co.uk (where I got mine from).

If buying your DSL modem on line, make sure it does PPPoA - many designed
for the US market only do PPPoE, which is bad and wrong.  No, it's not,
it's nowhere near as bad and wrong as PPPoA, but BT use PPPoA so you have
no choice in the matter.  The reason?  Errm, BT sunk a shitload of money
into ATM and are trying to find ways to use it.

> An alternative to DSL is the much cheaper cable services like
> Blueyonder (http://info.blueyonder.co.uk/publish/index.html). These
> often come as part of a telvision of phoen package from the same company
> and represent very good value. Allegedgly they are faster (on paper)
> than DSL although anecdotal evidence suggests other wise. These are
> almost always managed services.

It should be noted that cablecos are incompetent at the best of times and
struggle to provide something as simple as POTS reliably.  I don't trust
them to run something as complex as my IP service.  IIRC cablecos require
that you use Windows - at least whilst they're installing your connection -
and I don't *think* they provide static IP or let you run your own services.
DSL providers do (but check the contract, they may want more money if you
run your own services).

> Once you've selected your broadband provider you'll want to connect the
> rest of your computers up (you do have more than one, don't you?).
> 
> Whilst you can just plug everythign straight into the modem this could
> be considered harmful even if the modem does have firewalling
> capabilities. For about 30 pound you can build yourself a computer
> capable of running a firewall (go for the lowest spec possible, you
> don't even need a harddrive if you can boot from a CDRom or a floppy).

Eh-hem.  Logging?  Sure, you could use a seperate log-host but how many
people do *that* at home?  My new firewall box has a 2Gb drive dedicated
to logs and for storing data from tcpdump when I need to debug stuff.

I recommend  for cheap PCs.  You'll still
need to buy network cards, but seeing that "broadband" isn't really that
fast, ISA 10bT cards will be more than enough.

> Then run something like IPCop (http://ipcop.org/) or Smoothwall

Or a mini-Slack, or Debian, or OpenBSD - hell, any Freenix.

-- 
David Cantrell|Reprobate|http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

   The voices said it's a good day to clean my weapons