BroadBand Questions

gobby

Hey everyone,

I have recently been informed by the family that they are thinking of getting broadband into the house when I return home (in Germany at the mo). So I went and had a little look around the net for various items only to realise that there is a lot about broadband that I dont know! So I'm going to ask some questions here!

Well, I was looking at routers as there is more than one computer in the house (family pc and mine ). I noticed that many have a built in firewall.

1. Are these firewalls up to scratch?

2. Are they difficult to configure? Max 3 pc's, although when my mates come over maybe 2/3 more. This question applies to both router and firewall.

I also had a little look at the wireless route which would be prefered by me. Mostly so I dont have to run cables all over the house!

3. What are the security risks? I dont want some feller sitting accross the road with a laptop using my connection!

4. Is there much of a performance hit compared with a normal router?

And last but not least.

5. What are the prices like these days? I haven't been keeping up to date but I have heard of someone (complete non-techie) saying that they get it for €15/month from eircom. Bullsh*t??

Thanks everyone,
Gobby.

pencil

Hi,

As someone who is just back from 3 months in Asia & setting up similar - I too would find any answers most helpful - cheers & gobby its good to be back - even the constant grey clouds have a silver lining ;-)

simonm2

I just signed up for the iolbb 3 month trial.

They give a zyxel 623R-T1 router with the package. Configuration is dead easy.

Can't say how good the firewall is but you can configure it to block the basics (telnet, ftp, web etc..) by checking some boxes. First steps are to change the password and maybe the default range of IP addresses it assigns to users. It has one ethernet port and one usb connection.

I plugged it into my 8-port hub and it works fine. I get about 50kB download max (as opposed to the rated 64 for the service). The firewall runs some sort of unix/linux os. I did a quick search on the net to see if they can be hacked easily - found nothing. This doesn't mean that they can't be hacked, merely that they are not wide open like a barn door.

I have no windows machines connected.


Simon

simonm2

Forgot to say -- basic prices are 40 euros for 512/128 with a download cap. Prices vary by a couple of euros depending who you get it from. IOL has a higher cap than Eircom.

Add in telephone line rental at 24 a month so the real cost is 64euros a month. If I didn't do internet I wouldn't have a phone line - just a mobile. So it is valid to consider the phone line part of the cost.

For wireless. Security is definitely an issue here. You will have to read the manual and lock it down. Essentially you will need to set it up so that only the computers you specify can access the hub. Usually this means that you allow only specific 'mac-addresses' to log on. mac addresses are the unique addresses of each ethernet card in the form 6 pairs of hex numbers e.g. "02:0e:12:ef:9a:66" (invented number). Then password everything that can get a password. Mac addresses can be spoofed - but a casual hacker isn't going to be bothered when there are likely dozens of unprotected wireless networks around at the moment.

If you go wireless, get "g". Read up to see who has the best security features at present. It may be worth paying extra to get peace of mind.

Simon.