Re: ISDN preference

[Robert J. McKay <nospam [at] mckay.com>]

On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, French, Alastair wrote:

> sheflug - http://www.sheflug.co.uk
>
> I need to connect a small private network (with a linux box currently acting
> as a firewall and performing masqerading) via ISDN.
>
> As far as I can see I have three options
>
> ISDN router, connected via a secondary network card on the linux box
>
> External ISDN TA, via serial port on Linux box
>
> Internal ISDN TA in linux box
>
> What a peoples views on these, which is best, easier to setup, relibility
> etc.
> Something I also need to know is how to do channel bonding (bundling) the
> router would handle this automatically I would have thought, but what about
> the others

I am using a NetGear ISDN router (RH348) it works really well and it only
took me about 5min to get it up and running with dial on demand for my
home linux network I was quite impressed.

On the other hand, if you use an ISDN router you're limited to what the
router is able to do, whereas if you go with a TA then you're really not
limited at all. For exmaple, I would like to set things up so that my
network is connected as soon as it becomes offpeak but in order to do
this I've had to set up the router to dial on demand and then have another
linux box be a router and route between the router and my network. When it
becomes offpeak the linux box begins forwarding traffic, when the router
sees traffic it connects. If I had a TA I would just have a cronjob that
ran PPP.

Using a TA would be slightly more work (you actually have to install
drivers and unscrew your case.. unless it's already unscrewed ;-) but if
you want to do any really fancy stuff you might be better off. I guess
using an external TA would get round most of the gotchas like having the
right drivers and soforth. Another time when I tried to configure it to
constantly redial X-Stream's 0800 number it would blacklist the number
after 300(or so) BUSYs and not dial it again for a few minutes and there
was no way to dissable that.

My router works really well and I'm very happy with it. However it cost
far more than a cheap internal TA would have done (#220.00 form simply
computers www.simply.co.uk) and it's not as flexable. For routing a
normal office to the internet there really is no simpler solution than a
router; all you do is plug it in, give it your ISPs phone number, login
name and password and it's own phone number and away it goes.

Regards,

Robert McKay.

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