[Gllug] portability of adsl connect info

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 09:42 +0000, Alain Williams wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I will be playing with a broadband modem that someone has brought back from
> their sea side cottage (nice for some). I need to do a small amount of reconfiguration
> (changing the DHCP allocated range since it caused problems [clashed] with a VPN
> that they wanted to get into).
> 
> After doing this I would like to test it. I stronly suspect that plugging the modem
> into another ADSL enabled phone socket would not work since the username/password
> are, somehow, linked to the physical phone # (which is miles away near the seaside).
> Can someone please confirm/deny this.

It's locked to your ISP. It never used to be though, and when ADSL was
introduced it was quite possible to use a line provisioned by one ISP
and authentication credentials provided by another, as the physical line
just links you to the BT network. The authentication information tells
your modem/router which ISP gateway to use on that network. I found this
out the hard way by ending up with a mixup between 2 ISPs which resulted
in a billing mess that took months to unscramble....

These days however, when BT provision the line it's set up on the DSLAM
to allow access only to the gateway machines of the ISP that ordered the
line. If both physical ADSL lines you're using were provisioned by the
same ISP, you'll have no difficulty moving equipment. If they're with
different ISPs, you'll be unable to connect.

Mike.

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