[Sussex] Re: Sourcing list of hardware

[Ronan Chilvers]

On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 08:48:46AM +0100, Desmond Armstrong wrote:
> My comment here is that when I see one of those soft modems I like to 
> throw it out and replace it with the ADSL modem / router, normally the 
> low cost one from www.qtds.com.
> 
> Two reasons:-
> 1/ I don't want to expose the computer to the internet (especially 
> important with dual booted machines)
> 2/ The common USB modems use processor power and in some instances I 
> have experienced internet speed even slower than dial up using it. 
> Problem immediately resolved using the stand alone modem / router. (I 
> always get the ones with 4 sockets as the cost difference is so little)

Depends. I used a Speedtouch ADSL (the green froggy one) very
successfully for 2 years plugged into a p2, 64MB, 2GB with IPCop installed 
on it. Extremely stable, excellent speed, no problems at all. Recently 
swapped it for an external ethernet modem cos I wanted to play around with
building a custom firewall and ethernet is easier than USB.  Still have
the Speedtouch and would happily use it again.

Having said that I haven't used any other USB modems, but I
think that they can be pretty bad as you say. I think BT switched from
the speedtouch to an Intel one as their default broadband modem -
generally had pretty bad experiences with Intel modems so...

Firewalling is the key though. If you can firewall your connection,
whether its local or networked, that's the important thing.

Cheers
--  
Ronan
e: ronan at thelittledot.com
t: 01903 739 997

This email has been digitally signed using GNUPG to verify the identity
of the sender. Please see http://www.gnupg.org/ for further information.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/attachments/20061025/87d42da8/attachment.pgp