[Wolves] No-NAT ADSL Router

[Adam Sweet]

Sorry to not reply in thread, I've been away with the fairies a bit and
there would be too many individual posts to comment point by point.

I have heard very good things about Zen from a few people but I think
I'd rather go with the devil I know and my employer who already uses
Enta is paying.

Can't get cable where I live, I'm about a mile outside the coverage
zone, I would have changed over by now if I could :) Also, I need a
static IP for work and no blocked ports for myself, which rules out most
of the cheaper DSL suppliers. My exchange is LLU enabled, but I'm told
that my line 'doesn't support 24 Mb next generation Internet' by my
existing ISP, but the new line I had installed when my previous employer
 paid for it did. I've since has an engineer switch over the 2 cables at
the exchange so my connection is now running over the newer of the 2
lines, so where that leaves me I don't know. I suspect it might just be
some tick box on the BT customer support system that applies to some
property on my line, whether that is affected by having the engineer
switch the wires at the exchange I don't know.

I looked at the Enta traffic shaping thing:

http://adsl24.co.uk/networkstatus/#qalt

Sounds reasonable I think, not sure how that compares to other ISP's
idea of traffic shaping but it could get quite nasty I suppose. I
download quite a few isos (not as many as Morley though :)), so
throttling is a problem. I've been pulling netboot isos and getting the
packages over the net recently. I might set up a proxy so I don't have
to keep pulling the same packages over and over.

After a bit of head scratching and pondering over a ~£190 Cisco 877
which was recommended to me, I took a recommendation from Ron and got a
BT Business hub, which is a 2Wire 2700HGV under the covers. It's tied to
BT but you can play tricks on it to allow it to use any ISP, stop it
upgrading to undesirable firmware versions and boosting the wireless
signal strenth:

http://bt2700hgv.tripod.com/ir1002700HGV.htm

For £20 inc delivery it was worth a punt and it seems to be working
fine, took a little getting used to but it seems ok so far. I'm hopeful
that it might be better on a line with signal quality issues. If anyone
else thinks about trying it, note that it doesn't do UPnP, which is a
very good thing for security according to Re-LoaD, but might make some
apps stop working properly until you figure out what needs to be allowed
in and out of the firewall.

Thanks to Chris E for the offer of loaning his DSL card, I'm ok for now,
but I might ask at some point and thanks to everyone else for their
help. I just gotta prep my network for the migration and build my
firewalls :)

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