A couple of offlist emails I received asking if
there is a way to know if their ADSL is Layer2
or Layer3 apart from asking their ISP
providers.

In Australia, the answer is yes. And to check your
ADSL, use traceroute, like so:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] root]# traceroute mail.acay.com.au

traceroute to mail.acay.com.au (203.88.255.16), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
 1  compaq (192.168.1.10)  0.421 ms  0.240 ms  0.223 ms
 2  adsl (192.168.0.1)  0.648 ms  0.924 ms  0.637 ms
 3  203.122.96.254 (203.122.96.254)  156.770 ms  34.474 ms  28.252 ms
 4  syd_rt01 (203.88.236.86)  26.148 ms  30.342 ms  26.502 ms
 5  mail.acay.com.au (203.88.255.16)  28.293 ms  26.331 ms  28.429 ms

In the above traceroute, look for a link with ip-number '172.31.*.*'.
There is none in the above. Conclusion, the above ADSL link is Layer2.

Why Layer2 over Layer3 ?

Layer2 is more reliable and secure given that you use the same
hardware and software. This is an obvious outcome due to
it being one layer down the OSI model.

>From my experience with Layer3 is that when a link is dropped
at your ISP provider side of the link, many times I have to reset
my ADSL modem to restore connections due to routing problems
(slow or hung connections). With my Layer2 these problems
have disappeared.

>
> Does your service support Layer2 ADSL ?
>
> Oscar Plameras
> http://www.acay.com.au/~oscarp/disclaimer.html
>
> From: "Grant Parnell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> > I'm only mentioning this because people have asked about it in the past.
> > Yesterday EverythingLinux put on it's first paying ADSL customer with
> > no hitches. We used a Pulsar ADSL PCI card which has binary-only drivers
> > for certification reasons. I think we were lucky with the Telstra side
> > taking about a fortnight from memory.
> >
> > As mentioned before we'll only support Linux servers plugged into the
> > ADSL. It's for businesses that are sick of being told "Oh sorry we don't
> > support Linux" when contacting their provider for help. Basically we can
> > now do full end-to-end support of the service (barring physical line
> > faults). Another useful option is the backup dialup service with the
same
> > login, password and same fixed IP address.
> >

-- 
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug

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