right my area has just been activated in terms of broad band.

Now i have a small network running one PC win2k, one mac (osx) , an occasional linux machine and some products from empeg towers.

Questions are

How good or bad is freeserve ?

What kind of speed should i expect from broadband as freeserve say 512kbps but i am sure i will never get this.

Freeserve claim there service will not work with OSX but if i have the pc attached to the broadband can i just steam the internet to my my computer which is the mac.

Any reccomdations on modems etc or should i go for the one that freeserve offers.

Anything else i should think of.

but if i have the pc attached to the broadband can i just steam the internet to my my computer which is the mac.

You can, but I recommend very much doing something else instead.

In between your DSL modem and your home LAN, insert a broadband NAT/Firewall/Router box. This will allow the Macs and PCs to all share the one IP address and will also protect you from hackers and such.

They are inexpensive (under $50.00 these days) and are very much worth it because they make everything much easier and less likely to be hacked or to get worms (viruses).

Have a look at Bulldog (www.bulldogdsl.com)

I don't know if they cover everywhere, but they are way better than anyone else I've tried.

Also have a look at www.asdlguide.org.uk for info

And get yourself an adsl router modem (perhaps a wireless one) rather than faffing with the USB thing Freeserve will give you. Then you can just plug anything into the router and it will instantly be connected to the internet.

right my area has just been activated in terms of broad band

I assume you mean ADSL, as opposed to cable modem ?

How good or bad is freeserve ?

They are an okish ISP. If I were you I would also consider http://plus.net/ who are also another half decent low cost ISP.

What kind of speed should i expect from broadband as freeserve say 512kbps but i am sure i will never get this.

In my experience with ADSL you should expect to see 512kbps most of the time. Your ADSL connection is contended (i.e. you share bandwidth with other users), but that is how most of the Internet works anyway. In the UK the consumer targeted BT supplied ADSL (which is what Freeserve and PlusNet are selling you) is contended at a 50:1 ratio. This means that for every 50 users on your exchange there is at least 512kbps of bandwidth between you and the ISP.

If it was a simple as that though ADSL would suck, as one user on the exchange streaming P2P downloads all day would leave everyone fighting for bandwidth. So exchanges tend to have more like 12,288kbps shared between 1,200 users (still a 50:1 ratio) so then it takes more "greedy" people to have a noticable effect.

Contention in the UK seems to work fairly well at the moment. All the people who I have come across who said they were suffering from the effects of contention turned out to have faults on their lines.

Any reccomdations on modems etc or should i go for the one that freeserve offers

Get a router instead. ADSL routers start at 50 quid nowadays, so it is silly not to.

For example:

http://www.dabs.com/products/prod-info3-info.asp?&m=y&stockcode=334-010-0020&ad=WS

N.B. I haven't used that router myself, but it seems to a have a very comprehensive feature set.

If you chose plusnet they will sell you a router with the line.

If you buy a router, make sure it is a router with an ADSL modem built-in. There are lots of routers on the shelves of PCWorld and the like which are described as "broadband routers". This is not what you want, they are design for routing between two Ethernet networks (usually used to connect a network of machines to a cable modem).

We've got Pipex DSL here at Jen's flat. They're not the cheapest, but I've had absolutely no problem with them (except when BT have tripped over something and brought down the whole of South East England).

As for a modem: as others have said, get a combined DSL modem and router. It'll do the firewalling and NAT stuff you'll need to get multiple computers connected.

I've got a D-Link DSL604+ doing that here. You just plug it into the phone line (with a microfilter), and plug the computers into the back[1]. It's also got built-in wireless, which works really well with my laptop.

As for speed, as others have said, you'll generally expect the full 512Kbps.

On the Mac OS X thing, Freeserve probably don't support it for two reasons:
1. Support costs. They'd have to train their people on something other than Windows. They probably don't support Linux either.
2. Their USB cable modem doesn't work with it.

Get a router. It'll make your life much easier than trying to route via the PC.

[1] Mine drops down to a sequence of hubs and switches to get from where the router is to where the PCs are. I must get hold of some longer bits of cable.

I forgot in my earlier posting to recommend what is probably the most techie friendly UK ISP.

http://aaisp.net/

They may not be cheap, but they a very good ISP. For example, they have been particularly pro-active in identifying problems in BT's network, by pinging all of their customer's ADSL lines on a regular basis and aggregating the results to spot problem before users have even seen them. I haven't come across any other ISP who are this agressive at finding problems without the user having first to find a problem and report it.

That said, I am currently with EasyNet, who I would not recommend. I am with them because when ADSL started I wanted a 1Mb 20:1 contended line and at just over £100 a month they were the cheapest. BT have since reduced their wholesale price of ADSL by about 70%, but EasyNet have never reduced the end user price by even a penny.

I could now get 1Mb for less than half what I am being ripped of by EasyNet for.
I intend to switch to PlusNet or AAISP when I can, but BT make the migration so painful (especially since I run my own domains on the line) that I have been putting it off for nearly a year now.

When i go down the router route is there going to be any hassle using that with freeserve as that is who i have my e-mail with and since i am regitered with lots of agencies with that address i would like to keep it.

With dial up you need three things a phone number to dial, a user name and a password to log on is it similar with a router and how would i get that info into the router assuming i go for a d-link one with out wireless since i have two wireless access points already

Anyone using OS X with freeserve or even using freeserve broadband as i use them and they try to make you use a nasty program to configure a PC.

When i go down the router route is there going to be any hassle using that with freeserve as that is who i have my e-mail with and since i am regitered with lots of agencies with that address i would like to keep it.

From a technical standpoint, connecting to all the BT supplied UK ADSL ISPs is the same. So connecting an ADSL router via Freeserve is no different to connecting via any other ISP.

With dial up you need three things a phone number to dial, a user name and a password to log on is it similar with a router and how would i get that info into the router assuming i go for a d-link one with out wireless since i have two wireless access points already

With ADSL you have the basic setting for the router and your user name and password (which your ISP will supply). With most routers you enter these details via a web interface on the router itself.

Anyone using OS X with freeserve or even using freeserve broadband as i use them and they try to make you use a nasty program to configure a PC.

You do not need to run anything on any of your PCs/Macs to get ADSL working with a router, whether Freeserve tell you to run anything or not.

When i go down the router route is there going to be any hassle using that with freeserve as that is who i have my e-mail with and since i am regitered with lots of agencies with that address i would like to keep it.

As long as you continue to pay for an account with freeserve, your email address will not change. Whether or not you use a router has no bearing on this.

With dial up you need three things a phone number to dial, a user name and a password to log on is it similar with a router

No.

With a broadband connection you are now directly connected to their network, and there is no need for a password to access that network. The password is now only used for connecting to certain specific services such as email (your email software probably already has the password in place so you won't need to change it). And of course, now that you're not using a modem, there's no phone number to dial any more.

That's the point of brodband... a direct connection. You turn on the computer and it's on the network. No dialing, no passwords, nothing.

(At least that's how it works around here. I dunno about sunny Scotland, they might do things differently there...)

With ADSL here in Sweden (Telia) I get an instant connection to Telias internal servers, but they're black-netted at 10.* To get onto the real net I need to provide a username/password at an internal web page. There are small utilities that'll handle that automatically for you, but they're generally ISP specific.

/Michael

Oh yes, that crazy Telia thing! I remember KPN Research showing me a similar thing, and I told them to drop dead.

The Telia thing is OK for WiFi, but utterly silly for an always-on service.

That's the point of brodband... a direct connection. You turn on the computer and it's on the network. No dialing, no passwords, nothing.

(At least that's how it works around here. I dunno about sunny Scotland, they might do things differently there...)

That's not how it works in the UK. You do have a username and password for ADSL connections (though most people only have to ever enter them once). I'm pretty sure that at least one of the UK cable modem ISPs has a username/password as well.

I have also been recommended Andrews & Arnold - they have some guy who posts on alt.internet.providers.uk and uk.telecom.broadband and they know their stuff. Pipex is the cheapest of the large ISPs.

Our exchange is getting upgraded on the 22ns and I am getting hooked up on the 28th Unfortunately I have 6 months left on a £23/month ISDN contract and BT are the only people that pay off your ISDN contract if you sign up with their ADSL service for 12 months. (yes, very "strange")

After several years with a modem, a year with 2-way sat and 6 months with ISDN it will be a huge relief.

Gareth

I have my ADSL with Nildram, I've only ever had one outage in the year or so that I've had it. ADSLGuide still rank them too...

I'm with Zen and have no complaints at all - even the customer service was friendly, although I must point out I only spoke to them when I was waiting for BT to test and connect my line.

Quite a few people I know are with Nildram also; they seem happy with the service. I just went with Zen beacause they waived the connection fee during the month of June.

Setting up the router is pretty easy via the web interface, as someone metioned. I got a router with a built in firewall which you may want to consider - although it is a little extra expense.

Definitely check out adslguide.org.uk though - it's a great site to help you make your decision.

I got a router with a built in firewall which you may want to consider - although it is a little extra expense.

It shouldn't be any extra expense, I haven't seen a recent ADSL router that doesn't have firewall functionality.

The Telia thing is OK for WiFi, but utterly silly for an always-on service.

It doesn't really bother me - I run qadsl (app for automating the connection w/o manually going to the login page) at boot after all the other network scripts on my Linux box. In the (very) odd event of the connection dropping it's just a matter of doing "qadsl -l" to login again (possibly after having to power cycle the ADSL modem )

/Michael

In the (very) odd event of the connection dropping it's just a matter of doing "qadsl -l" to login again (possibly after having to power cycle the ADSL modem )

I have ADSL from Xs4all (KPN), and it goes down every couple of days (sounds like some sort of timeout), so I have a script that pings the router on the other side of the ADSL, and re-establishes the conection if needed... Sigh...

I have something very similar on my setup. There is a problem with the BT ADSL setup that can cause the line to get into a state where it appears from both ends to be connected but no traffic passes. When it gets into this state the only way to fix it (without phoning up the ISP's support line to get them to reset the session), is to logout, login as the BT test account and log back in normally.

I can't afford for the line to get into this state when I am away (my domains would fallback on their secondaries until I reset it all). I therefore have an expect script on my Linux box that telnets to the router and does the magic logon-logoff trick.

I run this once a day, every day, from my crontab. That way I get just under 15 seconds of downtime everyday, but at least I don't get stuck with my line down and me hundreds or thousands of miles from it. Thankfully, even if I am using the line at the time I rarely notice the 15 seconds of downtime (thank God for TCP).

Okay i goofed as in i ordered this from amazon by mistake

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000088UJQ/202-4099261-8088665

However i have been given via some job related project one of these

http://www.pcinetworking.com/usage.php?category=3&item=1&serial=44

So i belive i can get this to go together

But what cale do i need to go from modem to PCI router thingy and which port do i put it in a LAN port or the Wlan port whatever that is.

Also any tips on setting up the firewall and router etc as the manuals don't really excist

You just need a straight patch cable to go from the ADSL modem to the wireless router. Plug the ADSL modem into the WAN port on the wireless router and plug your computers into the LAN ports. They'll also need straight patch cables.
If you've got wireless (802.11b) cards in your computers then you obviously don't need to wire them

only the laptop is wireless and the car (hopefully)

If so then just connect whatever else isn't wireless to the LAN ports on the wireless router. Just buy a bunch of standard straight through patch cables and one crossover cable. You'll not need the crossover at the moment but it's always useful to have lying around.

First step would be to setup the ADSL modem and check that you can access the internet with a computer directly connected to it.

After that you can do the wireless router and the firewall. It shouldn't be that hard to do if you're actually sat down in front of it.

Our exchange is being activated on the 22nd Oct and I just read in the parish magazine that the "campaign organiser" has arranged for the local MP (Mark Oaten, Lib Dem, Winchester) to come and "cut the ribbon" on the 24th!

Then a tour of the exchange, look at some stalls by some ISPs and then tea & biscuits at the village hall, followed by some beer at the pub!

I might finally have a chance to do a joke I've had stored for years:

Me: Ooh, ooh, ooh - what does that switch do?
BT Engineer: That's how we turn the lights on and off.
Me: D'oh!

Gareth
(PS. Personally I wouldn't let an MP get within 1/2 a mile of a telephone exchange with a pair of scissors!!)

(PS. Personally I wouldn't let an MP get within 1/2 a mile of a telephone exchange with a pair of scissors!!)

I'm not sure about letting BT get within 1/2 a mile of a telephone exchange, to tell the truth .

In reply to:

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Then a tour of the exchange

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<geek>I've always wanted to have a look round an exchange, you can't see much from peeking through a window!</geek>

Ha! Classic comedy

Dunno. I doubt it's going to be that interesting in a modern exchange. It'll be mostly empty with a couple of big cabinets and that's about it these days. Possibly an extra one for the DSLAM. What would be quite neat to see is the exchange+ADSL-in-a-truck setups that BT now have for emergencies.

Imagine being the poor sod that has to wire up that thing in an emergeny