[TriLUG] broadband in the Triangle area

[Faheem Mitha]

Hi,

Thanks for the info.

On Sat, 23 Aug 2003, mpdickens at tlanta.com wrote:

> I do not live in the N.C. area. However, DHCP is always your friend when
> doing a broadband or DSL installation. FWIW, I've had no problem here in
> Georgia using DSL or broadband. I've got my girlfriend setup with
> Bellsouth.net DSL (She is also running Linux). Here at home, I use
> Atlantabroad (Broadband, just as the name implies). Also, I did a Linux
> setup for a friend and he is on COMCAST broadband.
>
> In all instances, the DHCP portion of the installation boot process
> reconized the existance of the ethernet card as well as the DSL or cable
> modem. I run Gentoo and Mandrake at home. I've got my girlfriend setup
> with Mandrake and my friend is running SuSe. I've played around with
> Debian in the past. The ethernet sniffer in the Debian setup is rock
> solid as well as the DHCP client stuff: I really don't think your gonna
> have a problem. Debian is noted for stability and the project members
> pride themselves in everything working.

I'm not sure about the ethernet sniffing. Debian tends not to do much
autodetection, and when I set up computers on my unversity network
with DHCP at install time (which was very easy) I first had to
configure the ethernet card (which was easy too but not
automatic). I'm not sure how this compares to a DSL/cable broadband
connection, never having done one.

The ethernet card is not currently configured (since I am not on dialup),
so I'm going to have to do this manually.

> Just be sure you have a *well supported* ethernet card in your machine.
> Don't go with the Sam's Choice of ethernet cards or you could end up
> with no joy when you run the ethernet card sniffer or manually insert
> (Using mod probe) the ethernet driver. Read the Howto section regarding
> ethernet card and broadband setup (Two different documents). Go with the
> hardware that the docs say work. However, I'd stay away from the USB to
> DSL/Cable modem setup and stick with ethernet. It's tried, true and
> stable.

I've got a very standard 3com, carefully selected to work well with
linux. I configured my machine as a linux box.

faheem ~>lspci
...
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado]
(rev 78)

> I do a lot (And I mean a lot) of network equipment repairs (Chip level
> and such) on hubs, routers, switches and blades made by Cisco, Lucent,
> IBM, 3COM, Fore (Just to name a few). Not a day goes by that I don't
> have to change network cards or the network configuration (You name the
> configuration and we run it...) in at least one of the systems that we
> use to trouble shoot / repair equipment with. All of this equipment is
> running Linux and we never have driver problems or networking issues.
> Before we left windows and went to Linux, I could not say this.

Good to know.
                                                           Faheem.