On Sat, 4 Mar 2000, Grant Taylor wrote:
-=|Hi all. I'm looking for a little information on using Linux with
-=|Mediaone's cable modems in the Atlanta area. I first asked this in
-=|atl.general, and was pointed here...
-=|
-=|I currently use M1 up in Boston, and I'd like to know if the network
-=|is basically the same there in Atlanta. I intend to set my mother up
-=|with a Linux PC and a cable modem.
While I am no Atlanta area expert, I do know people who are uses of the
MediaOne network all across the country (Midwest, Jacksonville, Southeast
FL), and I can give a pretty good guess on the following questions.
-=|
-=|The deal here is:
-=|
-=| - LANCity cable modems, which appear as a standard Ethernet bridge
-=| from the computer end. A few areas here are switching to DOCSIS
-=| modems, which do frequency hopping and other interesting tricks but
-=| are effectively the same from a customer standpoint.
You'll probably get a DOCSIS modem on a new install if you're in a 2-way
area. I know many of the exsisting 2-way areas are getting DOCSIS modems
for new installs, and anyone who requests a DOCSIS will be given one, but
a mass exodus is some time off in most areas, so if your Lancity works
they'll leave it there for the forseeable future.
-=|
-=| - Ordinary DHCP for a preregisted MAC address. No funky login
-=| protocols or anything, just vanilla DHCP. The Yochi dhcpcd works,
-=| as does dhclient.
-=|
This is just about the same everywhere, including @home and other
services. Atlanta should prove no different.
-=| - "Static" DNS entries - either anything.ne.mediaone.net or a MAC
-=| address-derived fixed name. The names are rearranged on renumber
-=| so that foobar.ne.mediaone.net always points to the same machine.
-=|
-=| I downloaded the atl.mediaone.net zone file and all the names
-=| appear to be clientXXXYYY where XXX.YYY is half the IP address. If
-=| this is all you get, I'll need to whip up a dynamic nameservice
-=| thing of some sort.
This is one thing that I have only seen ne.mediaone.net offer. From
experience with other areas, none of them give custom hostnames. You'll
probably get either a genericprefixXXX-YYY or something along the lines of
area_specific_prefix-XXX-YYY. MAC address hostnames could also be
possible, but I haven't seen many of those running around except for
ne.mediaone.net.
You'll probably be stuck with a generic hostname, and you'll need to bind
a dynamic DNS hostname to that. It's important to note that most areas
will allow you to keep your IP for an indefinate amount of time if you can
keep your cablemodem and linux gateway powered at all times, that way you
don't have to worry about frequently-switching IPs.
-=|
-=| - No Linux support, but no active opposition either: so long as I'm
-=| there to do the equivalent operations to what the installer would
-=| be doing to winipcfg, we'll all be happy. Sort of a don't ask
-=| don't tell policy...
Right. I'd recommend that you have a doze PC online to install with, just
so less questions are asked (and you can be sure it's not Linux that's
screwing up if the install dosen't work), and then switch over to a Linux
machine the following day.
-=|
-=| - A cable modem administrative network built on the 10/8 unroutable
-=| network. The local customer subnet, with a 10 in the first octet,
-=| contains all that subnet's cable modems at unrelated host
-=| addresses. The cable modems speak SNMP, and one can monitor signal
-=| level, traffic, etc.
The Lancity networks are all the same just about everywhere. Ours run the
exact same way, however the new Toshiba DOCSIS modem I recently had
(lancity had modem problems) appears to have different software inside of
it that not only filters out all traffic not destined for your MAC
[something the lancity's didn't do all the time]. I haven't tested the
SNMP capabilities, but I'll let you know if I find anything interesting.
-=|
-=| - Reasonably good network connectivity including direct peering with
-=| various interesting networks around town. Up here this includes
-=| MIT, Harvard, and assorted regional backbones (but, inexplicably,
-=| not the NEARNet/BBN/GTEi network, which was historically the best
-=| one with all the schools and any tech businesses).
You have been lucky to be serviced by the ne.mediaone.net network, as from
experience I have found that whoever installed/ran their network had a
clue (hostnames, great peering, etc). Unfortunately, the other MediaOne
locations didn't catch on, and in many areas you're stuck with using one
or two large pipes to the net, normally though the bottom-line provider
(sprint.net, att.net, large reginal Tier-2 ISPs). You'll also probably
begin to see problems with flapping routes, and over-congested rr.com
pipes (When mediaone renamed to "MediaOne RoadRunner" they installed pipes
to the rr.com network, and I can safely say that the rr.com network is not
built with great response time/preformance in mind).
And I would also expect a pretty hard time getting tech support. When I
got my DOCSIS I was (of course) given a new IP, (24.129.16.255 to be
exact), which has also been configured as the broadcast for the DHCP
server, and also has the added benefit of no forward or reverse DNS. The
combination of factors keep me from doing such critical things as IRC and
logging into hosts that require fwd and reverse DNS to function (machines
at work are configured like this). I've had a horrible time getting
mediaone to fix it (it's still broken as I type this), and I don't
anticipate it to get any better any time soon. The last time I found a
problem (DNS zones had not been given new serial numbers when the network
was re-named, and so the primary DNS server had new data while the
secondary had old data) it took the mediaone service people over 3 weeks
to get the message and actually correct the problem.
-=|
-=|So does any of this differ from the Atlanta network?
Again, I claim no expertise in the Atlanta area specifically, but I can
say from my experience with most of the other M1 offices in the eastern
1/2 of the US that you will probably be a lot less happy with your service
when you move down here.
-=|
-=|
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