RE: Cable Modem Questions

["Steve Poling" <sdpoling@xxxxxxxx>]

>From: awilliam@whitemice.org [mailto:awilliam@whitemice.org]
>Subject: Cable Modem Questions
>
>Cable Modem access is now available in my area via the AT&T TCI @Home
>network.  As I know that there are several cable modem users on this
>list I have a few questions.
>
>Do you own your own cable modem or lease one from AT&T?  The price
>diffrence is $10 a month and the costs of cable modems doesn't seem to
>justify that cost.  If AT&T provided your cable modem, what make/model
>did they provide?

i lease my cable modem from AT&T. I'm told that they don't let me buy and insist
that I lease. The cable modem is an RCA Model 105.

>Do you use you Cable Access under Linux?

Yes. I have one node on my home network that serves as a gateway between my home
network and the cable network. This gateway performs IP-masquerade packet
filtering.

Here's what I did. I installed the AT&T provided ethernet adapter (NIC) in my
Win98 machine and hooked it to the Cable Modem via the ethernet twisted pair
cable provided. My Cable Modem required EIGHT FRIGGIN' DAYS to synch up with the
cable company. (It took them a while to get their act together from my cable
modem upstream to the cable system.)

After the Cable Modem started working under my Win98 machine, I started having
wild and crazy thoughts. I met a guy at the Perl Users' Group who has a Cable
Modem and runs Linux under it. But I thought his network topology was a big
goofy. I reading a lot of web pages about cable modems and linux, especially
running Linux boxen with multiple ethernet adapters. So, I discovered a Linux
distribution called "Coyote Linux" (http://www.coyotelinux.com/coyote.html) that
seemed to do 'zactly what I wanted.

I downloaded Coyote Linux' freebie version. Then I went through my junk box,
pulling out 32mb of RAM, a 486/33 CPU, motherboard, a NIC, power supply and
case. Then I pulled the TCI supplied NIC out of my Win98 machine and put it into
the computer I made with junk-box gleanings.

You see, the there's a DHCP server at the cable company and I think that it
needs two pieces of info: the NIC's MAC address and the connected computer's
node-name that they gave me. That DHCP server gives me a lease on an IP address.
But I digress.

I went to the Coyote Linux download and provided it with the parameters that my
hardware required. Then the Coyote Linux shell script made a boot disk for me. I
bought a floppy drive (though I later found another in my junk box) and put the
Coyote Linux boot disk in and booted up.

It didn't work. So, I tweaked parameters and corrected some things. It still
didn't work. The problem turned out to be that the cable company provided NIC
didn't want to turn off its PnP and turn on its interrupts. Eventually, I got
the bugs ironed out.

I can't emphasize how incredibly easy it was to get Coyote Linux to work on my
machine. I haven't tried the Linux Router Project (from which Coyote is
derived). If you want a pure gateway/router, this is a good way to go.

What's not yet perfect? I would like to check out Coyote v2.0 (that's not
available) that adds an Apache server and some other goodies. Of course, that
will mean that I'll have to pull a hard disk out of my junk box... It'll also
mean more security headaches. With a http server on my router, I'll move my web
pages off iserv.net and i2k.com and then get a domain name with someone like
tzo.com. There's a new mini-howto that describes this domain stuff, see
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Domain.html

smiles and cheers,

steve