Searching For Home DSL Router? 14
DP asks: "I'm getting DSL relatively soon, and I need a router/firewall, one that has DSL ports, Ethernet, and HomePNA, and preferably runs Linux, although as long as I can telnet in to change things it's fine. I've seen/read about various such devices, but can't really remember much other than they exist. Most I can spend is $500 or so. And don't tell me to just get an old 486 box, power consumption sucks and it doesn't have HomePNA."
What KIND of DSL? (Score:1)
Linksys (Score:3)
5 brillig toves from the JWokky.
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Evan
Re:Linksys (Score:1)
Lower end, but great Re:Linksys (Score:3)
OTOH, it does have its limitations (as others have mentioned). This includes *no* support for its 'advanced' functions - but this shouldn't be a problem for most readers of Slashdot.
If you want total control with any kind of reporting capabilities, you'll need to look elsewhere. Check it out at Linksys's site (www.linksys.com) to see if it fits your needed before you buy (the manual is available here in a .pdf).
Re:Linksys (Score:1)
Zyxel Prestige 310 (Score:1)
Linksys is great (Score:1)
SonicWall (Score:1)
We got DSL in late summer '98. We have a main office and a branch office, and I wanted a VPN so that we could share files and printers and whatever else came up.
I picked up a couple of SonicWalls for about $400 each. With the VPN option, we paid about $1200 for the setup. My Linux pals thought I was a sissy, but it was clearly the right decision for the business.
Now, with over a year and a half of experience with these things, these SonicWalls have been nearly PERFECT for us. I recommend them without reservation. The only reason I qualify that with "nearly" is because of a few minor bugs early on... these days, it IS perfect.
The SonicWall has a really sweet web interface, extremely simple and easy to understand. I trust the firewall at least as much as I trust anything. Decent logging capabilities -- my SonicWalls email me logfiles every day full of dropped connections and portscans. You can even set it to send emergency emails when it detects spoofs or specific attacks.
Opening a port and forwarding it to a specific computer is trivial. Flashing the BIOS is trivial. It's about the size of a videotape and makes no noise - no fans or hard drives. It never crashes and never needs maintenance beyond the occasional BIOS flash. It's got a nice-looking DHCP server built-in, but I don't use it. Supposedly it'll even do NetMeeting through the firewall, but I've never tried it. It also has a data logging option - you can count web site hits or track bandwidth in mb by user or service. Kinda nice.
The models I have only have a 10baseT connection, but they have newer models available with 100.
I keep hearing good things about the Linksys router, but I'd definitely look into the SonicWall. It's more expensive and it might very well not be any better than the Linksys, but I can tell you that I'm 100% satisfied with my SonicWall. It's just an excellent product that's never failed me and always done what I wanted it to do.
Re:Linksys (Score:1)
The linksys router does port forwarding (arbitrary port(s) to arbitrary internal IP(s)), so you could fire all port 80 traffic at one machine, and let apache virtual host the two based on name, or something like that. One proviso is that, AFAIK, the port forwarding feature requires that the WAN side have a static IP (what it says is no DHCP (presumably on the LAN side), but I haven't figured out a way,if one exists, to let the inside be static while having the router act as a DHCP client (i.e. if you're pulling a DHCP ip for the router, it turns on the DHCP server on the 'other side')).
I don't know what tzo is so I can't comment on that part of your question.
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What type of DSLAM does your telco use? (Score:1)
getting around the supplied router (Score:1)
Re:What type of DSLAM does your telco use? (Score:1)
One static IP for the little router and built-in DHCP & NAT to manage the private IPs of my choice for the 8 systems on my home office network.
To manage the box, you connect a serial cable, telnet in, or use a web browser. Note: doesn't use IOS, zehn, it uses CBOS. (Cisco Broadband Operation System) CBOS is "modeled" after IOS.
I'll second, or third or ... for the Linksys (Score:1)
Check out timhiggins.com (Score:2)
I looked over most of the reviews and my spin is that the inexpensive hardware routers trade flexibility for size, convenience, and power consumption. I'm personally looking at the Linksys Cable/DSL router since it's inexpensive, does NAT/IPmasq, and contains a built-in 10/100 switch. Downsides are that it only can forward a limited number of ports, the firewall is primitive, and the reporting/logging functions are minimal or missing.
choices, choices....