On Thu, 2006-13-04 at 21:39 -0700, Richard England wrote: > I'm looking into entering the 21st century and need some help finding > out how to go about setting up an ADSL connection at my home. Can anyone > give me some good novice references for what is required for a safe > connection in the way of cable modems, routers, hardware firewalls, and > how this is all connected? > > Any pointers gratefully accepted, and feel free to email me directly. > > Thank you, > As an ISP that has been providing different forms of ADSL for over 8 years, I have found the *best* setup is to use an ADSL modem and a separate router. If you have lots of phones, an alarm system or wireless phones, you may want to install a POTS splitter, to separate the phone signals from the DSL signals on the phone line. The reason I do not suggest an all in one ADSL router, is that they are generally not a very good router, and sometimes do not have as good a modem. As well if either the modem or the router fails, you have to replace the whole thing and reprogram the replacement router and I see more modem failures than router failures. If the DSL technology changes, or you want to switch to a cable modem, then you will still be able to use the same router. Personally I have a D-Link DGL-4300 at home. I wanted a DGL-4100 because I don't need the wireless, but I couldn't find any in stock when my old router croaked. It is an awesome product for a consumer level price, and has a 4 port Gigabit switch, which makes Samba transfers amazingly fast since all my machines have Gigabit Ethernet. It also has a lot of excellent configuration options and features. I have no affiliation with D-Link and am not "plugging" it, but am very pleased with this product, and would definitely suggest it to anyone wanting to set up a "future safe" home network. Good luck, and happy hunting.
