Broadband connection - advice requested

OK, finally they've decided to install broadband on my
exchange.

Currently I've an ISDN connection which I connect to through
smoothwall and have several PCs hung off the network. What
I'd like to do is simply remove the ISDN link and put in an
ADSL link without changing anything else. Is it this easy?

What sort of device should I be using to attach to the ADSL
service, would I be better off with some sort of ADSL router
that I connect to from the smoothwall box via ethernet?

And regarding the ISP, currently I'm with BT and *think* I
can simply choose to take their broadband offering (in
return for coughing up a little more each month). Is there
a good reason for choosing another ISP?

All help gratefully received...

 

said:

Order BB through a clued-up provider like Nildram. I was in the same
situation as you. Nildram can order the transfer through BT and for
about 50 quid (added to your next phone bill) BT swap the line to POTS
(analogue) test it for ADSL and enable it if it passes the tests. If it
fails they swap it back to ISDN and say no more about it.

If you don't go for the migration, you have to pay to swap the line to
analogue before you order the BB.

Then buy a router for 40 or 50 quid and plug it into your switch/hub and
Bob's your uncle.

 

Running any services[1]?

I'd go with something like the netgear dg8*4 [2] or similar, been
fairly reliable in the 18mths I've had it.

[1] If you are running services [3] and are o.k. mapping them through
to the firewall and then on to the respective host machines you
probably want a fixed ip address you can get DNS for. I think BT
now offer it, but didn't when I started using ADSL. You can get
around a dynamic one in software or even have the netgears update
a limited number of services.

[2]dg814 - cheap 100mb switch, dg824 - more dosh + wireless.
[3]netgear in NAT mode can only forward to 10 ports on tcp/udp,
others may have more. Won't be a big deal if smoothwall does the
transitions to your private address range, you can turn off NAT on
the router then.

BTOpenworld seem to have sold their soul to Yahoo, and are now
bugging me to install new software (customised browser), in their
slow transition to make the internet 'just how it was meant to
be'(tm). So you might like to look at some others:-

http://www.adslguide.org - eclipse and pipex being used by coleagues.

 

Should be under Smoothwall; just reconfigure Smoothie to use USB ADSL
instead of ISDN.

Depends very much on what your service provider issues you with; some
provide a simple modem-only device like the Alcatel "frog" thing, others
supply a pukka CPE box with built in switch, NAT, etc.

My guess is you'll get a "frog" or similar and will then need a switch (or
at least a hub) to share the connection. Buy one either with (or with the
option for) wireless, preferably 802.11g and you're set for a while to
come.

Tch. Tough one that; I know plenty of people who hate BT and prolly equal
numbers of people who've not had any problem with them at all.


Personally, I think they're one of the least helpful, least flexible
Telcos about and certainly I'd want to go with one of the smaller
providers, even if they were running over BT lines, simply 'cause they're
a bit more clued up than the typical sales-weasel you'd get if you were
speaking to BT.

I've no first-hand experience (as a private individual) with any such
company, however, I have had dealings with a couple through work.

Out of the two, the one I was most impressed by was Always-ON
(http://www.alwaysonvpn.com/) but I'm guessing they're more geared-up
towards business solutions rather than private customers/

NP.

 

Already got the hub in place and since the PCs are not
likely to move I don't think I'll go for wireless since I've
already gone through the pain of cabling.

BT have been fine as an ISP to be honest. Less problems
than I had with Freeserve and less contention problems than
I had with Demon.

I don't like the way they keep cutting the amount of hours
I'm allowed under the 'anytime' package tbh.

I may well go with Nildram as Simes suggested. Problem is
I'll have to be around for the BT engineer to come and poke
around at the lines to check the line loss. Sods law says
I'm not going to get it anyway.

 

Erm, seconded! [1]

[1] Not that I'm biased in any way whatsoever, ever, erm, including, well,
er pr'aps not in this instance... ;o)

Iain (Marketing Manager - Nildram)
Honda VF1000-FII Bol D'Or (The Bol?) Duke 851 (The Duke), FZR1K (Jenny),
GPz750 (the pile of bits!), RD125LC (Elsie), Lotus Esprit Turbo (Lottie),
Lotus Elise (Liz)
ANORAK#02 http://www.ogilvie.org/bikes.htm http://www.ogilvie.org/lotus.htm

 

Iain Ogilvie said:

The only downside of Nildram is they aren't cheap, and you need to sort
out newsfeeds from elsewhere. I so use the Nildram server, but it's not
reliable, so often pull articles from the German server instead.

Otherwise the service is fine, and from the POV of the actual connection
to the net they are consistently among the fastest in terms of
throughput.

I'd still recommend them though.

Can I have my 50ukp commission now?

Shame Nildram's cluefullness doesn't run to working (or even existing)
sig separators Mr O...

 

Have a good look at http://www.adslguide.org.uk

Check out the suppliers on this site. You can order your ADSL online
through all of them.
Nildram always comes out best it would apear.

Don't bother with USB adsl. Get yourself a wires only connection. Plug
this into an ADSL router of your choice. I use a Draytek Vigor 2600.
Write up's and tests are all on the adslguide site.

My Vigor has 5 10/100 meg ports for network connection. I can turn off
all the computers and leave the vigor / access point powered up. I have
a seperate wireless (54G) lan access point so I can still use the laptop
in the garden or garage. The SO's computer can be moved easily about
in the lounge for the same reason. It's a bit like a scaled down version
of work.

Don't forget to put an adsl adaptor/filter on every phone socket. You
can do this before you get adsl. My adsl was activated 5 days before I
was notified. But the vigor automatically detected it as it was switched
on.

I bought zapik.com from http://sitelutions.com for 42 dollers for five
years. There setup alows you to setup MX, A and CNAME records for your
domain for free. So my zapik.com domain does not use any ISP and is
directly connected to the internet.

The vigor has all the firewall facilities you could require. NAT
(network address translation) and takes up far less room than a
smoothwall box.


--
SimonB - South Wales. BOF#32
*******************************
Triumph Sprint ST,
ZXR750L2 Wazimbaki.
Kawasaki Z1R For Sale
*******************************

 

Simon Atkinson was seen penning the following ode to ... whatever:

Hrmm? Back when I used them they were using Supernews, which is one of
the best, if not *the* best commercial newsfeed.

I can only speak for their ISDN connections but yes, back then they
were quick.

 

Pretty much, but make sure the SP doesn't object to you running multiple
machines... ;-)

It depends, everyman and his dog will recommend the SP they are currently
with, just as the best bike is the one that that person currently owns. If
you want the best service, best backup and price is less of an issue then
Claranet come highly recommended. Oh yes, i use them too! ;-)

JH

 

Timo Geusch said:

I think they still do for binaries - but it's a moan on the Nildram
newsgroups that Nildram have not pruchased enough connections to
Supernews and people often (more often than not apparently) get the
connection refused.

I only do text ngs, so I use the in-house Nildram server.

Can't moan about the speed on BB. Seems fine, a lot quicker than Demon
and less clueless than Demon have become since 'Thus' took over.

 

I am not aware of any ISP's objecting to this. Not offering support
if you have problems doing it , maybe.

 

I wondered if this was the case.

Well since I don't have an ethernet card in the box for the
'red' side (there's an ISDN card instead) I suppose I'll
need to:

1. Add a second nic for the ADSL
2. Get some sort of device that connects to the ADSL service
and presents an ethernet connection to the smoothwall box.

Of course, this all supposes that they can get ADSL to me.

I think I may well use one of the spare PCs to build another
smoothwall box for this, I guess the current smoothwall box
has had it's day (486 based)

 

I've just moved from BTOpenWorld to freedom2surf. They're very cheap
(for the 512kb RADSL offering) at £22.50 per month.

The service is fast, I've not had any connection issues and the
customer service people are great.

There is a free text-only news server which is adequate, for my needs
at least. I still use the goiman one, though...

www.f2s.net

HTH

 

Simon Atkinson wrote:

I think he's only a couple of hundred yards up the road from me. I'll go
and give him a slap.

--

Paul.

Ooh look, bikes and numbers and stuff!
CBR1100XX SuperBlackbird
VTR1000 Firestorm
RGV 250
BOTAFOT #4
BOTAFOF #30
MRO #24

 

Most of the routers I've used had the firewall built in.

However all you'll really need is basic NAT, and maybe a few forwarded
ports if you run your own servers.

 

My Draytec 2600 has a built in :-

* Built-in ADSL modem - plugs directly into your ADSL-enabled line
* Universal Plug'n'Play (uPnP) for support of MSN Messenger
(Downloadable f/w)
* Comprehensive Firewall - with keepstate facility, DoS/DDoS
protection, IP anti-spoofing and user-configurable packet-filtering.
* Built-in native VPN facility with PPTP, L2TP, 3DES IPSec and MPPE
encryption
* NAT Port redirection, forwarding and DMZ
* Multi-NAT facility - enables a one-to-one mapping of public to
private IP addresses, with individual DMZ and port-formwarding.
* LAN-to-LAN linking via ISDN or VPN
* VPN routing for multiple remote private subnets (between two
Vigors)
* VPN Passthrough for VPN client/server running behind the router
* 4-Port 10/100BaseT Ethernet Switch (with automatic uplink
detection) for PC/Mac connection
* NAT port forwarding (For individual ports, ranges and DMZ)
* Support for non-NAT public subnets (multiple public IP addresses)
* WAN-Side IP address is selectable from all available addresses
* LAN Side IP address range fully configurable
* Automatic support for popular multimedia applications including
Netmeeting & MSN Messenger for multiple LAN users.
* SNMP & Syslog control/logging/monitoring
* Dynamic DNS Posting, compatible with popular services
* Easy configuration, monitoring & control from web-interface
* Wireless Access Point (802.11g Ethernet) for wireless LAN (Vigor
2600g only)
* DNS Proxy/Cache & DHCP Server (with ability to fix allocations)
* ISDN Interface for dial-up access and ISP backup for ADSL
(Vigor2600W/X only)

So I don't need anything else. It has no fans so runs nice and quiet...



--
SimonB - South Wales. BOF#32
*******************************
Triumph Sprint ST,
ZXR750L2 Wazimbaki.
Kawasaki Z1R For Sale
*******************************

 

Agree completely but the box I've got smoothwall running on is really at
the end of its life so I'm weighing the hassle of building another
smoothwall box up against the convenience of buying a ready made
solution.

 

:

Which box are you getting from nidram? Perhaps you could look it
up on the internet to see if it has all that fancy firewall stuff
already on it.

 

I've looked, it doesn't. They offer a 'secure service' but I'd rather
cough up a few quid now than pay them a few quid every month.