Void's Forums

I have cable so this doesn't apply to me at the moment, but I might get a xDSL connection in the near future.
I rad a lot of stuff about people having trouble to connect to the web using Alactel Speedtouch USB modems, sometimes it works, sometimes it takes effort to make it work and sometimes it simply doesn't work.

For the people who can't get their adsl modem to work under linux, could'nt they simply put a cheap router between their linux box and their modem?
Would that solve the problems they have?

When connecting a single machine the dhcp client sends out a request and then gets it from the isp's dchp server, what happens when you put a router in between?
Does the router take care of the dhcp request or is that still done by the pc itself?

And what about driver installation, since the modem isn't atached to the pc directly is there still any need for linux drivers? I guess so, otherwise how would the modem work at all? Maybe it's recognized by the router and doesn't need any additional configuration?

[Sigh] I'm still confused about the router issue, and I would hate it to move, get an adsl connection because cable isn't available and not be able to have access to the web anymore!!

kinda not to the point but i use an alcatel speed touch pro modem but not a usb one it just connects to the ethernet, works great everytime

If it is a USB modem you'll need to connect it to a PC. A router does not have USB connections, only ethernet connections. If the modem is an Ethernet based modem then you should have no trouble with any OS or router.

To answer your question about how the router works. The router has two Ethernet interfaces. The external interface would obtain the DHCP address from your ISP. The internal interface is what your computers would talk to. The router would also run it's own DHCP server and assign addresses to your home computers. It also manages the translation of the addresses it assigns to your home computers through the single IP address that your provider assigns to your router's external interface. This translation is what a normal firewall does. To me the devices should be called firewalls and not routers because they perform much more like a firewall than a router. They don't run a single routing protocol (RIP, EIGRP, etc) so I don't understand why they are called routers.

i picked up a dsl router so i have not run into the problem of getting adsl to work under linux. I recommend getting one, it makes life so much easier.

I use an old linux machine with two ethernet interfaces in place of a cable router.

As far as I know Linux support for the Speedtouch USB is rather good now.
Several Linux firewalls have out of the box support for the Speedtouch USB, I use a distro called smoothwall for my connection because when I got ADSL it wasn't very simple to setup a speedtouch 'frog' yourself. I run another firewall behind this as I like to write my own rules.
I also believe there are a series of routers made by a british company called the Vigor 28xx USB, which allow you to plug in a speedtouch USB and share the connection between 4/5 PC's. Matbe you could do a google search for them, they also advertise in the british PC Pro, if you get that over there.

I think that setting up a linux firewall/router would be the best option, as it is cheapest. Most likely free if you have ways of finding a crappy old 486 or above.
Or try and buy a DSL modem that interfaces with the PC by RJ45.