Which Router?

Ripwave

RicardoSmith wrote:

ADSL router, so that means its not a ethernet router? I'm not all that hot on networking so excuse the dumb questions. The others seem to be eithernet routers and wireless access points.

In very general terms, routers have "inside" ports and "outside" ports. The "inside" ports connect to your PC or LAN, and are usually ethernet and/or USB and/or wireless. The "outside" ports connect to your "upstream" link, and can be either Ethernet (for use with any ethernet connection, whether provided by an ethernet ADSL modem, or a Cable modem, or a Wireless connection) or ADSL (if your upstream service is DSL - this saves you having to have both a DSL modem and a router, as they are both built into the same box.

If you get a "DSL router" it can't be used with a non-DSL "upstream", because it doesn't have an ethernet port on the "outside". If you get what is usually referred to as a "broadband router", it will have an ethernet port on the "outside" and you will need to provide it with a DSL signal - which means getting a DSL modem with an ethernet port if you have DSL.

Whats the story with the firewall, and filtering on these routers. Also the wireless encryption they can do. Is this all something that we should be using? Is it handy enough to set up? Would you still need to run a local firewall like zone alarm on the client?

All of these routers provide the most basic of firewalls by virtue of the fact that they do "Address Transaltion". Your PC uses a 192.168.x.y address, which isn't directly reachable from the internet, so nobody can hack into your PC from outside. When your PC talks to the internet, the router translates that address into whatever the real IP address that your ISP provides is.

Effectively, you can "pull" whatever you want into your PC, but nobody outside can "push" anything into your PC, because any packets will only get as far as the router, and, unless you explicitly tell the router to pass them on to your PC, they will just be dumped. This makes this sort of setup very safe for the inexperienced user.

This doesn't provide any protection from stuff that you do "pull" into your PC, such as e-mail that you download, so you still need virus protection, and a personal firewall can help spot any worms that you do manage to infect yourself with (but the constant popups from legitimate applications trying to access the internet may be more trouble than most users want to put up with).

Some routers provide additional firewall facilities, such as logging, VPN support, etc.

And you should definitely enable the Wireless security options - this isn't just a matter of encryption to prevent anyone reading your stuff, but also to prevent any one else "borrowing" your bandwidth.

degsie

Does anybody know if the D-Link G604T Wireless 802.11g ADSL Router will work with the current offering of the esatbt 3 mth free trial? I'm on the waiting list . Also does anybody know what modem(router?) is supplied from esatbt by default for self install?

Ripwave

degsie wrote:

Does anybody know if the D-Link G604T Wireless 802.11g ADSL Router will work with the current offering of the esatbt 3 mth free trial?

There's no reason why it shouldn't - it's an ADSL router, and there's nothing particularly odd about the DSL that IOL/ESAT are providing.

degsie wrote:

Also does anybody know what modem(router?) is supplied from esatbt by default for self install?

ZyXEL Prestige 623-T1.

http://www.zyxel.com/product/model.php?indexcate=1030617987&indexcate1=1021877946&indexFlagvalue=1021873638#