[Wolves] No-NAT ADSL Router

[Adam Sweet]

Hi everyone

After Wednesday's discussion on ADSL, I have decided to join the rats
leaving the sinking ship and request my MAC code from Freedom2Surf for
the following reasons:

1) Persistent sync speed problems.
2) Traffic shaping which seemed to reach a head on Thursday when I went
from getting around 400KB/s while downloading an iso to getting around
100KB within 10 mins.
3) F2S were very good until they were bought up by Pipex and then Tiscali.

and (re)join an Enta reseller for the reasons discussed on Wednesday:

1) Enta don't throttle or traffic shape
2) The have direct access to the BT backbone and early access to
forthcoming technologies (ie 21CN, IPv6 (I think))
3) Their NOC is 15 mins from my house and I know quite a few of their
support staff through work.
4) Jon Farmer is a legend (just checking he is listening :))
5) After my original ADSL problems with F2S in 2006, I switched to Enta
and had fantastic performance on the same line that I have had terrible
problems either side of being with Enta. Sadly I had to leave them when
I changed employer (as both the telephone line and the ADSL connection
were paid for by my employer).

So now I'm looking at ADSL24 and while my exchange isn't ADSL2+ enabled,
I can still use ADSL Max with them and I thought, being the kind of
technical guy I am, I would plump for the 8 public IPs at no cost, which
means I'm going to need a new no-nat router.

Can anyone recommend one? I've been using Linksys routers quite happily
for around 5 years but they don't do a no-nat one, unless I'm missing
the no-nat option going by some other name.

Most I've googled seem to be either D-Link (not a fan of D-Link), Vigor
(not convinced by the Vigors I've used either, though they were quite
old), or no name brands. Bonus points for:

+1 for wireless (I might be missing the point there, since you probably
don't want your wireless LAN publicly routable).

If that's not the case:

+1 for wireless N.
+1 for ADSL2+ so I don't have to buy a new router when my exchange is
upgraded.
+1 for IPv6 (or at least tunnel) support. I note there aren't really any
consumer level devices which do this atm.

I guess the next point then is to design the network, I'd imagine you
put a NAT/firewall device of some kind on one of the IPs, so you can
have a non-routeable internal LAN and have web visible some machines on
the other public IPs.

                  DSL network
                      |
----------------------------------------------
|                 DSL router                 |
----------------------------------------------
        |            |          |          |
        |            |          |          |
  ------------   ---------  ---------  ---------
  |  NAT/FW  |   |Public |  |Public |  |Public |
  ------------   |Machine|  |Machine|  |Machine|
       |         ---------  ---------  ---------
       |
 -------------   ---------
 |Private LAN|---|WLAN AP|
 -------------   ---------

Does that look sensible, over-engineered or have any glaring errors?

Alternatively, I could look at one of the Sangoma ADSL cards Chris Ellis
was talking about. Can you recommend a model Chris? It seems like the
S519 does ADSL2+ and the S518 does everything up to ADSL Max.

Can ADSL2+ devices operate in regular ADSL (Max) mode if so configured?
What about these cards? This was the intention of raising the subject of
Wednesday. I was worried that buying an ADSL2+ card/router might not
support regular ADSL and my exchange won't be upgraded until 2010/11.

Sorry to splurge a cluster-**** of noob questions. To summarise:

1) Can anybody recommend a no-nat router with any of the above plus points?
2) Does the network layout look sensible?
3) Do ADSL2+ devices generally also support regular ADSL?
4) Would I be better off with a PCI DSL card and if so, which? They're
pricy :)

Many thanks,

Ad