[PLUG] Victor is going through the book Linux System Administration

[Ronald Chmara]

On Sep 4, 2007, at 10:28 PM, Victor Soich wrote:
> Hi all,
> I am going through the book Linux System Administration published by
> Oreilly.  It basically holds your hand as you set up DNS, LAMP, et.
> al.  The book assumes you have a static IP address.  ( I've already
> made use of dynamic DNS option, but I've had to RTFM the internet too
> much to try to get it working, so I want to go through the hand
> holding Oreilly book.  )
> I currently have a residential account with Comcast which comes with a
> Dynamic IP address.  They will not sell me, or give me a static IP
> address, unless I get a business account.  I can't get DSL in S.E.
> Portland where I live.  Comcast, seems to me, my only option.

T-1 (and fractional portions thereof) goes everywhere. It's rock  
solid reliable (unlike comcast). This is because it's been regulated,  
and built-out, for stability and reliability, to death (unlike comcast).

It's also spendy.

> To get a business account they want to charge me about 50 bucks a
> month to get the static ip address,

This is deter heavy traffic users from saturating cable, which is a  
shared-wire network.... a decent hosting company is often much cheaper.

> and I have to sign a one year
> contract.

This is to deter fly-by-night spammer operations.

> I don't know if I will be able to understand this linuxy
> stuff, so I don't want to commit to a one year contract, so they said
> I would not have to be under contract if I paid 150 bucks a month.
> That's bogus, but that's not my main issue.

$750 a month (A decent, full, T-1) for guaranteed connectivity is  
pretty reasonable for a business making over a 100K a year. Below  
that, there's fractional T-1, Comcast cable (totally spotty, but fast  
when it works), ISDN (not spotty, but slow and spendy), and of  
course, the dedicated 56K wire.

Or you could just host at a place *designed* to host sites.

> My high spped internet connection through my residential account with
> Comcast works with a D-link cable modem that a friend gave me.  A
> technical support guy from the business side of Comcast said I needed
> a special modem, a SMC Gateway.  Is that true?

Perhaps. Comcast activates and transmits to accounts based on MAC  
addresses, which are vendor (SMC, D-Link, Cisco, etc.) specific....  
*but* if you had a router that could *emulate* the SMC feature set,  
*and* used an SMC MAC address, you might be able to use something else.

> I thought I could just
> use my existing modem, get a business account from Comcast, get a
> static IP address, modify the appropriate file in Debian, and be on my
> way.

Yeahbutno. The internet 10 years ago, yes, but that was before CIDR,  
zombie clusters, ISP proxies-from-hell, and porn/span/torrent traffic  
saturating the links.

> Also, the business salesperson from Comcast said that there is a 250
> dollar installation fee.  I have sticker shock at that.

lol, you must be young-ish. I once paid over 4K for a 10Mb hard  
drive, and at one point in time, had the sublime pleasure of solo  
operating a machine with 100 *thousand* dollars worth of ram, CPU,  
and disk (it had 512Mb of RAM, and dual 486's, and a whole *gigabyte*  
of hard disk!). I still have some of the many video cards on my wall,  
there must have been 20-30 of 'em....

Anyways, in modern terms, yes, basically, for *business grade  
service*, it may take 5-10 people-hours, at 25 dollars an hour... so,  
ten hours to get (and keep) your system working right, so, $250  
sounds decent.

> Can't I just use my existing hardware, i.e. my cable
> modem and computer that currently work with Comcast residental, and
> just transfer to Comcast business, and just have them tell my what my
> Static IP address is, or do I really need to go through a 250
> installation hassle, and get a SMC Gateway modem from Comcast?

I would like to use my Hyundai Elantra for long haul trucking, can I  
just attach a hitch?
I would like to teach brain surgery, can I just use my boy-scout  
first-aid merit badge?
I would like to run my business through a cheap POS pseudo-router to  
a network that doesn't even do decent BGP, and do I mind having 3-8  
day total outages?

You are not paying, in all actuality, a fee for what you use on  
Comcast. You are paying for them to get (and keep) their shit  
together for reliable service.

> Essentially, what the cheapest way for me to get and play with a
> static IP address?

A VPS/VDS/(etc.) "server" at a hosting company. Get your own root,  
IP, play away.

-Bop