At 01:27 PM 2/27/02 +0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >I have the opportunity to setup a firewall for a local >non-profit organization. They want Internet access for >their office. Both Cable and DSL are available in their >area. Prices and speed seem comparable. I have been >using Eiger and Dach 'steins for years with a cable >connection. I have not used DLS or PPPoE. Are there >any advantages/disadvantages with either option? Thanks >for your opinions! I am mostly concerned with ease of >administration.
Before you can recommend a solution to them, you need to find out more about what they want. "They want Internet access for their office" has too many meanings to serve as a guide. The important question is whether they want to make services (like an onsite Web server) available on the Internet. If they do, you want to recommend that they get either (a) a service that offers static addresses -OR- (b) one that offers dynamic addresses that don't change very often (making use of dynamic-DNS service easier and more reliable). The first is better, but the second will be cheaper, and since non-profits rarely have more monry than they know what to do with, cost may be a big issue for them. If you need to opt for (b) above, this *probably* means going with cable. My experience is that cable/DHCP leases change relatively rarely, while DSL/PPPoE leases change multiple times per day. But those observations are generalizations, and you need to find out what is true in your area. If they only need outgoing service, this consideration does not apply. LEAF variants now support both DHCP addressing (used by cable-modem providers) and PPPoE addressing (used by most DSL providers), but do allow for the fact that PPPoE requires a bit higher level of hardware than true Ethernet-based connections. The last thing to think about is service quality, both the frequency of interruptions and the actual speed delivered. Cable connections use shared bandwidth (they are functionally like a hub-based LAN in this respect), so the actual speed delivered can be much lower (or, occasionally, higher) than the service's nominal speed. DSL is point to point, so the promised speed will be the real speed ... between the client site and the ISP. But bandwidth is shared *after* that point, and can be underprovisioned by a DSL ISP as easily as by a cable ISP. There is no general answer to this one; you need to ask around locally to find out what the specific providers you are considering actually do. Aside from that, the only advantage I can see to DSL is that you are likely to have multiple DSL-based ISPs in your area, but only one cable-based ISP. My observation is that this is an advantage of DSL only in theory, though, as the low-price DSL provider always seems to be the telco. -- ------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--- Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Leaf-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-user
