[Scottish] Broadband: Made my Trigger

[Brodie, Euan]

Hi Phil, there are a couple of differences between a router and just a plain
old adsl modem.  To keep it simple a router will allow you to easily share
your internet connection between different computers.  The router will
probably have 4 ports so would allow you to have 4 devices hanging off the
back of it.  

The modem on its own can come in a couple of flavours.  The majority of ones
I have seen that are supplied by the ISP are USB modem's and as such can
only be connected to one computer.  However if this is what you end up with
now, and you decide later that you want to share the connection then you can
still do it by installing a Network card in your machine and using an
internet connection sharing utility.  However the problem with this is that
you would have to have this computer switched on before any one else could
use it.

For simplicity I would just buy a router and use that.  That way you don't
have to worry about any of your PC's being switched on and the config for
both MS and Linux would be just to enable DHCP IP allocation.

Can't answer the IP / data stream question though.

A fixed IP is only really useful if your wanting to connect to your computer
from another computer, i.e. if your going to be running a web site.  However
you usually have to pay an extra bit of cash for one.  There are work
around's available, a quick google for dynamic DNS would come up with a few
suggestions.

Regards,
Euan

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Phil Deane [SMTP:phil at miracleexpress.force9.co.uk]
> Sent:	Thursday, September 25, 2003 10:03 PM
> To:	ScotLUG
> Subject:	[Scottish] Broadband: Made my Trigger
> 
>  Hi Folks
> 
> I have made my trigger finally, and now can start to plan what kind of 
> connection I want. I am wanting a 1MB connection if i can get it, 
> 
> I have 1 primary PC, which dual boots, well she reboots into windows and i
> 
> reboot into mandrake, does that count? :-)
> 
> My 6 year old twins have a pc as well, but I dont think I want to hook
> that up 
> to the net yet, maybe an option in the future, but for the purposes of
> your 
> advice, I just want to consider the dual booting pc.
> 
> People have advised to get a router, but I am not sure what the difference
> 
> between a router and an adsl modem are? Do I need both?
> 
> I have tried searching the web but all i come across are sales sites, and
> of 
> course they are going to say they are great.
> 
> I also heard data stream, is better than ip-stream, but again not sure
> why.
> 
> Do I want a static Ip address? Sounds good, but on dialup I have never had
> 
> one, so I dont know if one would benefit me
> 
> Any advice and recommendations greatly appreciated.
> 
> -- 
> 
> Phil Deane
> http://www.MiracleExpress.force9.co.uk
> 
> 
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