[ale] OT: ADSL modem bottleneck

[Mike Murphy]

In the Telco monopoly's defense: I've had Bellsouth ADSL for nigh on 2.5 
years now. I use my linksys home router for the PPPoE part, and a linux 
box to keep my dyndns.org record updated. In all that time, I've 
averaged about one IP address change a week (except for 2 or 3 times 
where I've seen 2 overnight -- I presume they are doing some 
maintenance), and only one extended period of downtime, about 8 months 
ago for most of an afternoon and evening, when there was some issue that 
afflicted most DSL subscribers inside the perimeter. Other than that, 
its been troublefree. My only other annoyance has been their slightly 
wierd MX vs A records for mail thing that's led to me having to use 
[mail.bellsouth.net] with the brackets in my sendmail.cf to send all my 
mail the "right" way.

I've got my trusty old A1000 too (its, geez, like 6 years old now), and 
in all the time I've used it, I've never noticed any weird duplexing 
behavior. And I do all sorts of crazy stuff, like heavy duty gaming, and 
IPSEC and other sorts of vpn on that connection. I always get 1200+ down 
and 200+ up though, too.

Mike

Dow Hurst wrote:
> How expensive are the ADSL cards to put in a Linux box? I've seen them 
> in Sysadmin magazine now and LinuxFormat from some hardware provider.  
> I've thought that building up the whole single purpose device under 
> Linux would be nice for the control of the connection.  The little ADSL 
> routers available never seem to be able to keep the connection from 
> hanging which then requires recycling the power on the them.
> 
> Also, we use Linux router/fw's based on Slackware from Fly-By-Day for 
> hooking up to the ADSL ethernet based modems from Bellsouth, Earthlink, 
> and the cable modems from CharterCable.  I've also got a SMC Barricade 
> wifi ADSL router/fw box that works fine with Earthlink, but I've put the 
> Fly-By-Day fw behind it to protect the research based home network.  I 
> don't trust the wifi or home network in that case at all.
> 
> The SMC Barricade series and the 2Wire series of multifunction 
> router/wifi/HPNA/fw/ADSL devices seem to be able to be updated remotely 
> by the respective companies for OS and IDS patches.
> 
> Bob is always on top of the Fly-By-Day fw's so I don't have to worry 
> about them.  He has some nice packages for email with spam control, and 
> VPN solutions too.
> 
> The most robust solution we have so far for uptime is the Charter cable 
> setup where the cable modem gets a static IP and the Fly-by-Day fw 
> router protects the home network.  The PPPoe stuff with BellSouth and 
> Earthlink tends to have PPP downtime.  However, the Fly-By-Day 
> fw/routers give us enough control to be able to troubleshoot effectively 
> when stuff dies.  It is always the provider, never the Linux box now.
> Dow
> 
> 
> Mike Millson wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 2004-03-01 at 09:39, Bjorn Dittmer-Roche wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Mike Millson wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Sun, 2004-02-29 at 09:41, Bjorn Dittmer-Roche wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> But DSL is only half duplex, so would a half duplex 10BaseT 
>>>>> actually slow
>>>>> you down?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Are you saying that DSL and ADSL in and of itself is only capable of
>>>> half duplex? It's not just a pipe between the router and the central
>>>> office? You can only be uploading or downloading at a given time? Or 
>>>> are
>>>> you saying that the router itself, like a hub, is half duplex?
>>>
>>>
>>> That's what I read, but I'm having trouble varifying that now. Some 
>>> sites
>>> seem to think that duplex means symetric. Anyway, I will just say that I
>>> *think* DSL is half duplex and leave it at that. Someone else know 
>>> better?
>>>
>>
>> I did some searching around, and I'm convinced that the ADSL that I have
>> is full duplex.
>>
>> I'm not so sure about IFITL. It may be half duplex.
>>
>> And I found this in the Linux DSL HowTo:
>> "Most DSL modems and routers typically are set to half duplex."
>>
>> No doubt the 10BaseT connection on my ADSL router is half duplex.
>>
>> It seems to me that the Alcatel 1000 router itself is the bottleneck.
>> The ADSL connection my only be 256 kbps, but it is full duplex. The
>> router can do 10 Mbps, but it's only half duplex.
>>
>> Anyone know of a full duplex ADSL router that they would recommend using
>> w/ BellSouth ADSL?
>>
>> Mike
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ale mailing list
>> Ale at ale.org
>> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>
> 

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Mike Murphy
781 Inman Mews Drive Atlanta GA 30307
Landline: 404-653-1070
Mobile: 404-545-6234
Email: mike at tyderia.net
Email Pager: pagemike at tyderia.net
AIM: mmichael453
JDAM: 33:45:14.0584N  84:21:43.038W
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