network question - is this unusual?

Gerhard Magnus magnus at agora.rdrop.com
Sun Jun 7 00:09:59 UTC 2009


On Sat, 2009-06-06 at 19:47 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Anne Wilson wrote:
> > On Friday 05 June 2009 00:51:12 Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> >> Gerhard Magnus wrote:
> >>> I recently had to deal with my ISP about a connectivity problem that
> >>> turned out to be on their end. (The tech referred to linux as lie-nux
> >>> and insisted on doing everything in XP which I fortunately had
> >>> dual-booted.) But in the process of working through this it was
> >>> necessary for me to describe the way I'd set up my LAN here and he
> >>> seemed incredulous. This wouldn't bother me except that I've gotten this
> >>> reaction before from people in the outside world but never an
> >>> explanation. So I'm asking: is there something weird about this
> >>> structure? Is there some "better" or more standard setup?
> >>>
> >>> The DSL modem Actiontec modem provided by Quest plugs into the phone
> >>> jack. The Actiontec is an older model with only one ethernet plug. Since
> >>> I have four boxes, two of which are dual booting Fedora and XP, I have
> >>> an ethernet cable connecting the modem to the DSL plug of a Linksys
> >>> router. I then have separate cables connecting the four outlets on the
> >>> router to each of the four boxes. (I did all this cabling at a time
> >>> before wireless routing was as available and cheap as it is today.)
> >>>
> >>> Each of the six operating systems (4 linux and 2 XP) has a static IP
> >>> address and each has a firewall. I have NFS running on the linux
> >>> systems. There's another firewall on the router, which is currently
> >>> port-forwarding only ssh and torrent data from the outside world.
> >>>
> >>> I thought I'd check this out before going further....
> >>>
> >> Well, I only have 2 PCs and a printer with wired connections - the
> >> rest are wireless connections. I also have a virtual machine or two
> >> with a bridged connection. They all go through a Netgear wireless
> >> router. I have static addresses for most of the machines, but I did
> >> it using the dhcp server configuration. (If I change NICs, I have to
> >> change the dhcp server configuration.)
> >>
> >> About the only strange this is that I have 2 IP addresses set up for
> >> my laptop - one for the wired connection, and one for the wired
> >> connection. (3 if you count when it makes a VPN connection from
> >> somewhere else...)
> >>
> > Isn't it unusual to connect the modem to the DSL socket on the router?  The 
> > only time I've set up one where I had to use the supplied modem I used the 
> > router as a switch, connecting the modem to one of the LAN sockets.
> > 
> I assumed he was just using the wrong nomenclature, since it appears to be 
> impossible to do, the DSl socket has to be POTs (four wire) not RJ45 (XbaseT). 
> So I assumed that he just meant the external network socket, which he called the 
> DSL socket. Or maybe he has a router with an interesting labeling, who knows.

I reported the labeling wrong. I have a cable from the "Ethernet" socket
on the modem (the only such outlet) to a socket labeled "Internet" (not
DSL) on the router -- which is what I assume you mean by the external
network socket.

> 
> I really don't see how he gets all those static IPs, unless he means private 
> network IPs not available to the outside.
> 
Yes, they are private network IPs (192.168.xxx.xxx) -- I was trying to
distinguish between IPs that are fixed and the ones assigned by DHCP. Is
the "static IP" term reserved for actual Internet addresses? 


> -- 
> Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
>    "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
> the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot
> 




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