[geeks] ADSL Modem

[Sridhar Ayengar]

Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
>> I guess they think that no-one who uses a 7200-series will want to
>> have their WAN coming over a DSL line.  That's a shame.
> 
> You have to admit, that target market is pretty small.  It'd be nice for
> a backup Internet connection, but most folks using a 7200 probably have
> a T1 or T3 or optical connection.

Even though it's old, I've found that the route performance of my 7505 
between my private and public networks is far ahead of the route 
performance of a NetBSD PC.  Most of the traffic on my network is 
between my internal and external FDDI rings.  I had trouble getting 
anywhere near 100Mbps flowing between the networks using a PC.  I also 
tried to use a Sun, thinking that the endianness might have something to 
do with it.  No joy.  That's why I bought the Cisco.  Ever since, the 
performance has been fine.

>> Although, I think I might even prefer an external box that would take
>> care of this for me, over a module for my router.  I still haven't
>> managed to find one.
> 
> I use an Ultra 1 running OpenBSD to abstract-away the PPPoE nastiness.
> It's massive overkill.  I plan to replace both it and my OpenBSD
> "router"[0] with a cute little (and MUCH less pwoer-hungry) C7-based
> Phylon box as soon as I get the spare cycles to do the swap.

I was hoping to use something much simpler.  I think what I might end up 
using might be one of those Zyxel ADSL routers.  It seems that they 
support all kind of DSL encoding, as well as integrated PPPoE and PPPoA. 
  I just have to figure out how to make sure that the Cisco gets the 
external IP address, and not the Zyxel.  There's probably a "bridge 
mode" or something similar in the Zyxel.

Another choice might be a Cisco 677.

> [0] Two separate boxes because I needed the connection up Right Then and
>      didn't have time to figure out how to make pf+ppp DWIM.  SBC had
>      previously told me that connections with static IP addresses didn't
>      use PPPoE; I was very frustrated with them when I found that out to
>      not be the case.  Not nearly as frustrated[1] as I was when I found
>      out that the "10 or 15 dollars extra" for statics was actually $75.

That's the main reason I use Cloud 9.  Plus, they don't charge extra for 
IP blocks up to Class C.

Unfortunately, there's nothing they can do about getting rid of PPPoE. 
That seems to be dictated by Verizon.  I'm going to ask them tomorrow if 
they can do PPPoA.  We'll see what happens.

> [1] But, then, All Telcos Suck.

Indeed.

Peace...  Sridhar