home network/adsl

TrickyKid

Ok,

So I'm getting a bit excited about the possibility of getting ADSL back.

To surmise, I had ADSL trial and then moved house and therefore lost my trial.

However, my new house [or rather my new basement] is a lot bigger then the old apartment and I've also got a spare 16 port hub lying around. So I put two and two together and thought....

Hey, why not network my house, be able to run two or three computers, and also be able to move from Living Room to study to bedroom to dining room with my laptop.

So, my initial questions are.

1. Considering I've got an existing ADSL modem, is there any way I can use that in a multi mac environment or do I need a router/some form of unix box.

2. Where's the best place to buy trunking and cat 5 cables [when I got the office networked, the guys there had the basically a big roll of cable, were I to get one of those how straightforward are they to put the "plug" on to?]

3. Anyone any tips or advice on how I should approach things?

bricks

You can buy a router and hook it up that way or whats more interesting and cheaper is to get an old PC and 2 network cards.
I found a usefull site on the net for a router on a single floppy disk. Its ready built and is compatable with eirom's ADSL. All you need to do is put in your username and password into the config file on the disk.
A cable from one network card goes to the ADSL modem and a cable from the other goes to your internal network HUB. When you boot up off the disk it should automatically connect you to the ADSL.
This disk will also supply IP address's 10.10.x.x to any of your machines that are setup to get their IP address from DHCP.
The machine will also give you a firewall protection from the internet. (It blocks all incoming ports below 1024 by default).
I've been using this as my connection to the ADSL since december and it works perfectly.
As for attaching the plugs to the cables, you'll need RJ45 Crimping tool. This can be picked up in Maplin/Peats for around 30 Euro.
The plugs are fairly handy to attach once you get the hang of doing them.

ando

once you have the adsl setup, plug it into either a switch/router... linksys routers are usually cheap enough, I got one there last year thinking i was gona get onto a trial...

anyway, they act as a hub iswell so its worth it. Then plug your macs into the linksys switch.... You can get the cat5 cable and tools from a number of places. My company gets them from a IT warehouse in tallaght industrial estate. The companies called 'Temple', not so sure of the street address though
I'll have a look around for you l8tr.

You'll also have to get a wireless network card and antenna for your laptop, not so sure of them, but there pretty expensive last I saw. Plug the antenna into the switch/router and the wireless nic into the laptop... configure appleshare/Tcp-Ip and that should do it

Frank Grimes

If you have a spare/old pc sitting around doing nothing you could try using Smoothwall.

www.smoothwall.org

I have it on CD, just haven't gotten around to trying it out yet, looks easy to setup though. And it works on dialup/ISDN too.

Jorinn

Originally posted by TrickyKid
Ok,

So I'm getting a bit excited about the possibility of getting ADSL back.

To surmise, I had ADSL trial and then moved house and therefore lost my trial.

However, my new house [or rather my new basement] is a lot bigger then the old apartment and I've also got a spare 16 port hub lying around. So I put two and two together and thought....

Hey, why not network my house, be able to run two or three computers, and also be able to move from Living Room to study to bedroom to dining room with my laptop.

So, my initial questions are.

1. Considering I've got an existing ADSL modem, is there any way I can use that in a multi mac environment or do I need a router/some form of unix box.

2. Where's the best place to buy trunking and cat 5 cables [when I got the office networked, the guys there had the basically a big roll of cable, were I to get one of those how straightforward are they to put the "plug" on to?]

3. Anyone any tips or advice on how I should approach things?

I envy you, when I was out my sister was dumb enough to give a technician back the 4-port DSL modem I had. (So I have to pay for it)

the Guru

Be careful of which ADSL package you get beacuse if you get the SOLO ADSL and you network it up ....... you will not get tech support if you have any problems ............ How will they know ? they dont but If they have to fix a problem or if you have any querys they wont deal with you .......... So opt for the Multi Package and your Laughing !

sceptre

Though you are paying more for what is an expensive product to start with. Consider options carefully. Eircom won't give you good support wrt your internal network even if you do have the multi-user contract.

If you have any idea of what you're doing (and you will learn fairly quickly if you don't), there may not be much point opting for the multi-user product. Personally I wouldn't let it near me if there was any cost difference at all.

sikes

i am on the solo trials.

got my house networked up and use analogx proxy to share the connection.

works a dream.

po0k

What about possible WAN applications?
Is it easy to configure them just like a leased line with relation to proxying, firewalls, connection sharing, traffic management?

TrickyKid

I like the sound of that smoothware thing a lot.

but just let me get this straight ...

I'd set it up as follows.

Adsl line goes into ADSL ethernet modem which has Cat 5 cable going into machine running linux & smoothware. Which then goes into my hub and acts as firewall and DHCP server .

Now, a couple of issues strike me ...
I presume I'd be hand customising the settings etc... for ADSL to work (seeing as Eircom don't supply software for Linux (I don't think anyway) - would this be a big job, or is it fairly straightforward?

I'm becoming far more into doing this than I ever thought possible.

Frank Grimes

You'd need a second network card in the smoothwall box to supply the connection to the rest of the LAN.
Eircom only provide PPPoE software for Windows/Macs.
The most common PPPoE client for Linux is Roaring Penguin
http://www.roaringpenguin.com/pppoe/
It's included in most distos.
Smoothwall has built in PPPoE support, so it shouldn't be too hard to configure by hand.
All the docs. are here: http://www.smoothwall.org/community/docs/
I'm pretty bored at the minute so I'll probably be back with more

Yep, I am bored. Here's more on setting it up.
http://fp.furrie.f9.co.uk/Docs/SmoothWall/SmoothWall.html
That guy's using the USB modem, but everything's pretty much the same.

alastair

I'm on the trial and am running the adsl modem into an airport basestation which handles my G4 and ibook. If you don't want to go wireing up your whole house, it's an easy and convenient rote to go (no pun intended).

I got a 4 port modem for the trial, and am considering getting the uncapped 'multi user' service if the price is right.

TrickyKid

are very nifty, but my titanium 500 is actually supposed to have minor overheating potential with them so I'd probably use Cat 5 cause of that. (though I like the idea of just using an airport and bragging to all the wintel chaps)