[PLUG] Sharing a modem

[Roderick A. Anderson]

On Sat, 3 May 2003, Michael Montagne wrote:

> My wife is moving her company and needs to use a modem to connect to the
> internet until her DSL is installed.  They are all Win98/95 machines.
> Someone told her that she could set up a Win2000 machine as a phone
> server.  Then:
> Me:  "You should use a linux box"
> Her: "A linux box!!  Can you set that up for me?"
> Me:  "Well, err, I, um , well......"

Well I'd strongly suggest an Asante (or other company's) hardware firewall
verses trying to knock something together.  For around $120 (a year ago
price) you can have a decent firewall in place that will work with a
modem or Ethernet connection.
   I ran a diald based system for years and built several for companies
and churches before the advent of inexpensive firewalls.  Then about a
year ago I started having problems with my internal modem so decided to go
with an external which worked fine but I wanted a more commercial touch to
my home setup (which I use to demostrate what can be done) so I bought an
Asante (with serial port).  I had it up and working within 30 minutes
which included _reading_ the installation guide (very MS oriented) and the
UNIX network portion of the manual.
   I now have DSL but the modem is still connected to the firewall (which
is behind my DSL bridge/router) just incase the DSL (SDSL - not shared
line) circuit goes down.  I can reconfigure to use the modem in about 5
minutes.

Kind of goes against the grain to use something not Linux but I'm
pragmative about these things.  I use Microsoft products until I can find
an easy or decent Open Source/Linux solution.


Rod
-- 
  "Open Source Software - Sometimes you get more than you paid for..."