On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 10:24:47AM +0100, Jan T. Kim wrote:
Looking at the offers by BT and NTL, I have not been quite able to determine what hardware is provided with the packages offered. For example, the most basic package from BT is advertised as "Not Mac compatible", but I've not been able to figure out what causes this incompatibility.
Basically, you don't want to buy broadband from BT, as they will not offer you technical support if you are using Linux (amongst other reasons). There are plenty of other ADSL suppliers who provide broadband over a BT phone line. If you already have NTL cable tv or phone then getting broadband with them could be sensible. Basically they provide you with an ethernet socket on the back of the cable box. You can then connect a router to this to connect all the other machines to.
The computer(s) to be connected are laptops (running Debian), if that makes any difference. As a next step, I'd also look into getting wireless, so I'd be interested in comments on that too.
If you want wireless my suggestion would be to get ADSL (if you have a BT phone line) from someone like Black Cat Networks [1] (who host this mailing list and provide DNS for Alug etc.) and buy some kind of adsl router with a wireless access point built in. (Netgear, Belkin & Linksys will sell suitable routers and there are other manufacturers).
The main reason I suggest Black Cat Networks is that I am very happy with their service (more so than any other ISP I have used) and so are other Aluggers who use them and Jonathan (who owns/works for/runs Black Cat) is in the pub every month for the 2nd Thursday Norwich Alug pub meet.
[1] http://www.blackcatnetworks.co.uk/
Thanks Adam