[Wiltshire] Meeting 8 th December 2008

[David Fletcher]

On Thursday 11 Dec 2008, dianne reuby wrote:
> 
> > How are you connected? Do you have ADSL down a phone line or a Virgin 
cable 
> > modem? Do you use a separate router? Does it have WiFi? Do you use it?
> 
> > Tell us exactly what you have and use, then somebody might be able to help 
get 
> > you running.
> It's really odd - I've used virgin/ntl for years, and had no problems with 
Ubuntu since I first tried it two years ago - worked immediately. But I was 
using a USB connection rather than ethernet, mainly because we never got 
round to buying a cable. :)  We just plugged the modem into whichever PC we 
were going on line with - they're next to each other so it was no hassle and 
we rarely wanted to be online at the same time.
> When we had the problem recently, the engineer put a new modem on for us as 
ours was quite old, but it only has ethernet. Ubuntu finds my card, but won't 
connect. Hence trying different cards, cables, slots, routers. XP is fine - 


Dianne,

I would recommend that you never, ever, plug a computer directly into the 
cable modem. Yes it should work, but, you are then effectively connected 
directly to the Internet with the IP address provided by Virgin Media, and 
open to attacks from anybody, anywhere.

What I have here, beside me, is a Belkin cable/DSL router which I used for 
several years until I bought a wireless one to play with. I could let you try 
it out and see if it solves your problem or not. The first time I installed 
Red Hat Linux it worked OK for a while, then I think NTL changed the IP 
address or something, and the printer stopped working due to address 
confusion. As soon as I bought this router all of the problems went away. 
Plus you're reasonably well hidden from wrong-doers by NAT, plus you can plug 
in multiple computers.

Dave
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