[Malvern] Is there life in BT Broadband?

[Chris Eilbeck]

On Sat, Oct 02, 2004 at 12:37:28PM +0100, Guy Inchbald wrote:
> 
> I've been playing with a few distros/toys to come up with my ideal
> system. The arrival of BT "Broadband" 3 miles from Upton, subject to an
> engineer's visit, makes this a timely moment to ask for advice:
> 
> I'll need to sign up with BT Broadband, otherwise the engineer is
> unlikely to call for free.

Why do you need an engineers' visit?  I live quite a way from Malvern
exchange and didn't need it.  Do the test yourself.  Pick up a phone,
type 17040 and follow the prompts to do a test.  I think the correct
sequence is 3, 1, 2.  Put the phone down and the exchange will call you
back with the results.

You shouldn't have to go with BT Broadband anyway.  BT provide the line. 
BT Broadband or Openworld or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays
are a separate company.

> I'd like to have a firewall between my home network (mostly Windows -
> one will be used extensively for online gaming) and the "always on
> = always vulnerable" broadband. IMHO a firewall on a Windows PC is a
> contradiction in terms. Is it better to use a modem with inbuilt firewall
> (means buying one), or to use my planned Linux machine as a gateway/firewall
> for the others (so I can use the freebie BT modem which apparently has 3rd
> party Linux support)?

Get a modem/router/firewall box.  They're dead easy to set up, pretty
cheap and you don't get into the situation of not being able to reboot or
power off one machine because someone is doing something else on another.

> How techy is it to set up and maintain a gateway and a firewall?

Piece of piss.

> Presumably, there are some games to play with IP addressing between the
> "intranet" and the wide world.

You can run Network Address Translation or non-NAT.  NAT hides a private
class C network behind a single IP address provided by your ISP.  I'd
recommend going with someone like Zen (who I've been with for about 8
months now) and getting 8 static IP addresses so you can have some
machines NATed and firewalled and some machines (if you want) accessible
from the net for running servers.

> Are there any issues over online gaming which need thinking through?

No idea, sorry.

> Now to Linux. My ideal system:
>   Pure freedom for all main tools (GPL or better, even for commercial use).
>   Installer able to cope with most hardware and X GUI without deeply techy 
>   scripting.
>   GNOME only (no KDE). Don't know why, but GNOME apps tend to feel nicer.
>   Easy update / uninstall.
> 
> Debian looks close, but I am unsure whether even the latest 1.0 Installer
> will be easy enough for setting up X, or how Debian manages uninstalling.

Debian is easy to get going but the current installer doesn't install X. 
That's still pretty simple to do.

> Do any Debain-based distros come closer?

Debian Sarge is pretty good.

> Has anybody got a copy of Debian with the 1.0 installer they would be
> willing to burn to CD, for a small compensation?

Let me know what you want tomorrow and I'll see what I can do for the
meeting at Phil's place on Tuesday.

Chris
-- 
Chris Eilbeck                         mailto:chris at yordas.demon.co.uk
MARS Flight Crew                              http://www.mars.org.uk/
UKRA #1108 Level 2                                                UYB
TRA #9527                                                        PSMR