[Techtalk] Home Internet access on Linux

[Karen Locke]

On Wednesday 24 September 2003 09:39, Dan Richter wrote:
> Hi there.
>
> How easy is it to get Internet access at home with a Linux machine? I'm
> most interested in ADSL, but using a modem might be a possibility.

Short answer: I just hooked it up, set up a few parameters, and it worked. :-)

Long answer:  In my own home we have an ADSL modem, which hooks into a Linksys 
router with it's own firewall, into which we plug 4 network cables.  (2 
programmers, 4 computers.  Isn't that a reasonable ratio?)   Mine are SuSE 
Linux, his are Win98.   Sigh.

The Linksys box came with platform-independent instructions; one sets it up 
via a browser, and it's pretty self-explanatory.  So on my Linux machines, 
all I had to do was set up the network cards (and I use the SuSE-provided GUI 
to do setups like this).  The only info I really needed from my ISP for any 
of it were a few network addresses.   Since I originally used Win2000 with 
this hardware setup, I already had the numbers.   

No hardware problems.  One of the machines is a 3-year-old Dell laptop, so I 
may have just gotten lucky there.  The other is a desktop I cobbled together 
myself, and I made sure to use hardware that supports Linux.

I also set my dad up with a SuSE distro.  He uses a 56K modem (too far out in 
the country for either DSL or cable modem), and I found the setup was equally 
easy using the GUI menu.  I did have to replace his Winmodem with 
platform-independent hardware.

On all the systems, I did make sure to disable every network service and port 
that I don't actually need.   No point in leaving doors open with "burglars 
welcome" signs on them.   And I use ssh to communicate even between my own 
machines, behind the firewall.   I don't completely trust it.
>

> By the way, I'm a programmer, but I don't have any experience as a system
> administrator. I've used /etc/fstab and /etc/rc.d/* and that's about it.
> I'm not interested in an option that requires recompiling the kernel.

I'm not a sysadmin either, but between reading a couple of guidebooks and the 
gracious help of the chix, I've made everything work so far!
Karen

-- 
Karen Locke
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Someday a geologist, forever a programmer.
"If it was easy, somebody would've done it already."
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