h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

BT hates me - this is a well established fact, but their latest trick is one I cant get round

When you sign up for btbroadband, you get the voyager 105 modem and, in a nutshell, linux hates it.

I was shocked and amazed to get mandrake 10 running on a 233mhz/64mb, and everything worked fine - 'cept the modem (even after installing the patch) so I tried winlinux instead. It still didnt work. Then I tried that pornlinux, but that didnt even pretend to work on my comp, so I tried debian 2.2 and nothing. Redhat too. And lots of others.

The advice that seems to be offered on this is get a new modem. Thing is, I aint got fifty quid spare so I'm looking for alternatives. I really don't want to use windoze any more than I have to.....any ideas?

I was told a router would do the trick. The only problem is, I dont actually know what a router is

I don't care which version of *nix I use, just so long as its *nix...any advice at all would be appreciated....

A router is, in effect, a modem with a built-in network connection; it's even more expensive than a simple modem.

Does the BT modem belong to you now? Could you find someone running Windoze with a different modem who'd be willing to swap with you?

Unfortunately, the only other person I know with DSL I managed to convert to linux.....I didnt know I'd want there modem at the time

This is the cheapest option I can see, but I don't know what the Linux support's like...

http://www.dabs.com/uk/Search2/Product+Details.htm?quicklinx=14XK

I know it is too late for this advice, but from what I've read on my ISPs ADSL forum and elsewhere the hardware you get in these bundled packages is never up to much.

Depending on the deal the modem is either yours after a set time, yours straight away if you paid for it up front or remains BT's forever.

When I set my work up, I knew nothing and went for a BT router. I regret this now as I cannot configure it in anyway.

If others reading this are about to go down the ADSL route, and can afford it, I'd always reconmend a router. For many reasons;

Firstly, if you get a wireless one, you can have yuor PC in any room.

Secondly, most have built in hardware firewalls for added protection - with ADSL you certainly need Firewalls these days,also, again for protection, the router is the thing that is "seen" by the rest of the world, and will have its own IP address - PC connected to it will have private IP addresses and so not exposed to the rest of the net.

But they do cost more, not only for the router, but you'll need a network card in your PC - but check it hasn't already got one - some motherboards come with network (AKA LANs) built in.

But sorry can't answer the question

CHawke

CHawke, an addendum to your excellent summary...

If you need the features of a router, can only afford the cheapie sub-£20 internal modem, already have a network and have an old PC lying around as scrap, then you need the Linux Router Project.

All it needs is a PC (at least a 486, as I recall) with a Linux supported network card, modem (including DSL) and floppy drive. No hard drive is required, as the whole bootable system fits on a floppy disk.



Having just typed all of the above, I went to the home page ( http://www.linuxrouter.org/ ) to get a download link and found a mini-rant explaining that work on the project stopped a year ago.

The download site still seems to be active, though, so much of my advice above stands. It's just that if you need to use it with a modern (post-2002) ADSL modem you'll need to know how to manually configure the drivers.

Ah but it's GPL so some one could pick the project up at any time

or you could use one of the security and connectivity distro's which crop up on linux magazines every few months, like smoothwall.

the probem with using a wireless router which inludes your adsl link is that unless you really know what you are doing, you allow anyone nearby with a wireless connection to use your bandwidth.

if one of them happens to be into downloads, you can find yourself with a serious problem.

wireless routers should always be plugged into an extra network card on a server which seriously restricts what can be done from the wireless subnet.

they should also always be configured properly as well.

the same is true for any broadband connection, in that it should be partitioned from the rest of the network with rigid controls over which bits can acess it to do what.

I restrict my wireless to specific ID's

Same here. It's very simple to do, just add the MAC addresses of your PCs and other wirelesss devices to your trusted device list. It's a darn sight harder to spoof a valid listed MAC address than it is to crack WEP encryption, although to be on the safe side it's still best to use both.

the idea that no network is 100% safe is valid and true, it's just the more security steps you take the less people know how to crack the security. and the chances of one of those people happening upon your network get smaller and smaller.

A network can be considered "safe" when it takes less effort to come by the information the network is protecting by other means, e.g. by kidnapping the company's accountants...

there are 2 main problems with using the mac address as a security feature for wireless.

first, it is transmitted in the wep encripted packet, and is both readable, and spoofable.

secondly, wep is fundamentally insecure, to such an extent that you can actually get programs of the net for free which can crack it in real time on geriatric hardware.

wireless fundamentally is a system to only use when there is no other alternative. if you can plug a cable in, then do so.

having done so, exchange ssh keys, and then allow the only service to be an ssh tunnel.

because ssh is a secure protocol, it largely ignores the weaknesses of wep, and you can up the encription level without much dificulty.

of course you still need proper access control from your tunnel destination to further increase your security.