Originally Posted By: peter
Originally Posted By: wfaulk
First, I am unaware of NICs for PCs that support WAN interfaces like T1/E1, PRI, DS3, Sonet, etc. If they do exist, I can't imagine that the Linux support is all that great

If your telco's LTU doesn't terminate in Ethernet, the first avenue of investigation has to be getting a better telco. Failing that (or if running your own dark fibre or whatever), then yes, you do need a T1 or X.21 or whatever to Ethernet bridge, possibly even from Cisco, but that constitutes evidence of collusion between your telco and the "enterprise" networking vendors, not of any technical need. The first company I worked at that had an Internet connection, found that we had to spend £1500 on a Cisco "router" because the British Telecom LTU didn't terminate in RS232 or Ethernet or anything sane like that which we could just run into the Linux firewall, but in X.21. And that for a just 64kbps leased-line!


If my experience is anything to go by, anything that isn't presented as Ethernet (copper or optical) is considered legacy by BT and NTL these days.

Obviously there are times when only dark fiber will do, I prefer it for transporting video between sites. I've yet to find something that will do 8 uncompressed D1 resolution video feeds with no delay that uses Ethernet.
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Cheers,

Andy M