[SWLUG] Advice please: broadband + laptop

[peter]

Mark Summerfield wrote:

> I get the impression that getting a router will be easier & better
> than getting a broadband modem, so I'll do that. I also get the
> impression that it might be a bit nail-biting getting set up
> (especially since I'm hopeless at sysadmin).

With a router, setting it all up is child's play.  Honestly.  I did it, 
and I am to sysadmin what a fish is to mountaineering.

* Get hold of some standard cable with those rj telephone type thingies 
at both ends (the big ones, not the little ones)
* With the power off both on your machine and the router, plug one end 
of the cable into your box's ethernet card and the other into one of the 
holes in the router
* Power up the router and let it boot.
* Switch your box on
* Fire up your favourite browser
* Enter the router's admin page url in the browser (usually 192.168.1.1 
or something - it's in your router's docs)
* Login using the default admin uid and pwd (also in the docs)
* Select to define a new connection (or however the docs describe it) 
and fill in the blanks on the configuration pages, following the 
router's printed and on-screen instructions, with the info supplied to 
you by your ISP (ring them up for the info if there's something on the 
page you don't know)
* Test the connection from within the admin pages
* If it says "Connected", all is well.  (If it doesn't, and you can't 
see why, phone the help desk.  The great thing about using a router is 
they won't say, "Oh it's Linux.  We don't support it".)
* Open a tab and navigate to Google or something just to prove you're done.

The only thing I had to do was disable IPv6, because things were really 
slow with it enabled.  I don't know if that's changed now.

HTH


Peter