Re: ADSL connection qustion

From: Peter Matulis (1_at_1.com)
Date: 12/16/03 

Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 00:45:10 -0500

On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 02:45:18 -0000, "Justin"
<yu0123@justin7.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

>Hi everyone!
>
>I am going to build a network to share broadband internet at home, its going
>to look like:
>
>Internet ----------- ADSL Modem --- Router/Firewall ---Switch --- LAN
>computers
> (Ethernet)
>
>(i dono if I should have hardware router or an old 486 linux router yet)

What do you mean by a "hardware router"?

>These ADSL providers are saying their connection is always on, so I take it
>that means static IP

You may have the same ip address for a long time but it can be changed
without you knowing. So in reality it is not static.

> but as i havnt actually got it yet I dont know if
>"always on" actually means that, and if the modem will always automatically
>maintain the connection by itself and dont need something to tell it to
>connect.

An isp that states "always-on" means that they monitor your circuit.
If for any reason there is a disconnection then you will be
reconfigured (perhaps with a different address and different dns
servers). So the intelligence of "always-on" rests with the isp and
not with the user (or "inside the modem"). Note that this is simply
for configuration purposes. You can still configure yourself via
clientside software (such as ppp). I am not sure what happens if a
client initiated connection goes down.