From: Kendric Beachey <ak@kc.rr.com> Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 09:49:35 -0600 Subject: Re: Cable/DSL dilemma Message-Id: <00122209483900.01412@ak.kc.rr.com>
I too have an old clunker 486 set up like Gerald, which I use as a gateway to
Road Runner. I've got no clue about how long I keep the lease; I guess for
now I'm not paying attention to it. :-)
I should mention that the gateway machine runs the ThinLinux flavor called
Edge Router, which you can find at http://edge.fireplug.net
Edge is set up to fit on one floppy disk (specially formatted to hold 1760
kilobytes). My clunker doesn't actually have a hard disk. That enabled me
to save some money on parts when I put the thing together. Booting from
floppy does take a few minutes, but after that everything's done in RAM, and
I've never been able to choke the thing with too high a speed. 200 kilobytes
per second, up and down, is not at all uncommon.
Lastly, here's a page where you can check your download speed, although if
you're not a Road Runner customer, some of the latency of the net will be
figured in: http://www.kc.rr.com/rrspeed.htm
On Friday, 22 December 2000 09:10, Gerald Combs wrote:
> According to my DHCP client logs I've been getting lease times of 86,400
> seconds (one day). However, I keep getting the same address when I renew.
> My experience has been that this happens indefinitely as long as my box
> stays up.
>
> I have an old clunker PC with two NICs that I'm using as a firewall, DNS,
> NTP, and CallerID server. One NIC is plugged into the cable modem, and
> one is plugged into a hub along with the other computers in my house.
> I've been using the ipfilter package under OpenBSD and FreeBSD to do
> firewalling and network address translation between the two networks.
> Many others on this list have been using Linux to do the same thing.
> You can also pick up a small router designed specifically for this
> purpose for $100 - $150.
>
> BTW, I've always been skeptical of claims that DSL is somehow inherently
> better than cable. Both have multiple congestion points between you
> and the Internet at large, and the responsiveness of both is similar
> to many LAN-based technologies. As you add more and more connections,
> performance drops in a non-linear fashion.
>
> On Fri, 22 Dec 2000, Chris Mitchell wrote:
> > Has anyone here been successful with subnetting their own network with a
> > cable modem connection? I have not tried yet but am skeptical since it
> > is a dynamic IP. Heck I haven't even bothered to figure out how long the
> > lease life is on an IP that RR leases on it's network. Does anyone know
> > that? I guess it wouldn't be so bad if the lease life was, say, 75 days.
> > Anyway I have been tempted by the fruit of DSL with Futurenet but am
> > skeptical of performance because their competitive package's bandwidth f
>
> r transmitting is 128K (download is around 600K). I like doing the online
> gaming thing and heard complaints from DSL users. I smoke with my cable
> connection, granted I am fighting for bandwidth and don't have a dedicated
> connection to a switch. Anyone know of a program that gives
> upload/download speeds on a network connection so I can check my cable
> connection?
>
> > Chris Mitchell
> > bonovox@kc.rr.com
> > squish362@yahoo.com
> > mitchec2@leavenworth.army.mil
>
-- Kendric Beachey ak@kc.rr.com--------------62B1957D0EDDC09947DECBED