* On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 11:11:42PM +0100, IanBell wrote:
Broadband seems finaly to have arrived at my small coastal village. I have a Dell laptop with an Ethernet port and no network. Assuming I go for a wires only package, what is the most suitable hardware?
I think that depends on your needs & budget. I use an Alcatel (now Thompson) SpeedTouch USB modem, because it lets me have far more control over the gateway machine than a router would allow. That runs quite happily under Slackware 10.0 (and ran for almost two years on Slackware 8.0 (with security updates, of course)).
The only thing that I had to look out for was a flakey USB subsystem on the VIA motherboards. I got around that by writing a combination of scripts that test whether the Internet connection is working and, if not, kills power to the USB ports for 30 seconds and re-establishes the connection. If you want a copy, let me know.
As far as ISPs are concerned I have heard good reports of F9 and ukfsn.org ought to be worth a look/supporting. Any group experience of, preference for either?
I've never used F9, but UKFSN were good when I used them (briefly) for dial-up access (almost when they first started). I currently use Demon (it started as a discounted staff account when I first got it and served me well enough that I kept it when I left (sadly, no longer discounted, though)).