[geeks] Cable modems/routers

[Francois Dion]

mrl wrote:

>Just got cable installed at the house (after slogging along for 2 years
>with dialup and 6 months with 90$/mo ISDN), and the cable modem they
>give us sucks (at least it's a no-extra-fee "loaner", tho).
>
What is it? The Toshiba cable unit currently given out by Time Warner is 
not bad. It isn't anything like the good old Motorola I had back in 
1995. half rack, but 1.5U unfortunately. Still, you could add L brackets 
to rack mount it.

>Oh, and if I purchase a PCI cable modem, are there any gotchas?
>
Dont even go there. Set up a proper stand alone modem, then a hub (to 
connect the modem and firewall with straight thru cabling and for your 
IDS - you could use a switch too but they are vulnerable to all kinds of 
things and it's more work to sniff), then a proper firewall, then 
whatever you want behind that (multiple zones is best). If you get an 
all in one router/broadband gateway with wireless, put another firewall 
behind it, and your internal network behind that. Serves two purpose. 
One, even if someone hacks your wireless, they cant get to your internal 
network, and if they hack the cable modem or get thru, at most they get 
to your wireless device(s). Ok, maybe I'm paranoid, but the amount of 
scanning and tries of exploits since I've moved from DSL to cable is 
tremendous.

>On a related note, one of our switches may be failing. Any suggestions
>on what to replace it with are welcome (in the 4-8 port range, nothing
>huge).
>  
>
What kind of devices do you have? Any gigabit? If so, Linksys SD2008. 
We've been abusing them in over 100F environments and 24h/7days a week 
operation with no problems. This is in stand alone environments.

For anything that is backbone and where you need to monitor the network, 
you want a managed switch. Used Cisco Catalyst 28xx (10 mb but can take 
100mb modules too) and 29xx (100 mb) are great for home networks, 
altough a little large at 2U and a little noisy (set it up in the 
basement, under the stairs, or something like that). I'm suggesting in 
particular the 2916XL or 2924XL, since you said "one of our switches". 
I'm assuming you have several 4-5 port switches. Might want to 
consolidate to 1 switch. The 29xx (the old ones, 2U not the newer 1U) 
are great because they have 2 multiple use slots. You can buy a module 
for fiber 100 base fx, gigabit, fddi etc, atm, 4x or 8x 100basetx so on 
and so forth so you can adapt your home network backbone to changing 
needs. You can get to anywhere in your house with cat5, and anywhere on 
your property with fiber.

Extreme? This is the geeks list...

Francois