who needs broadband? 23 may, 2001 by johnmichael patrick monty monteith

Whenever you move into a new house, there are always surprises waiting for you. Recently we made such a trek over Lake Washington. From Seattle to Kirkland, to be exact. (I just had to get closer to Bill.) In this minor move we found more than our share of surprises. Sure, the fact that the plumbing and electrical will all need to be replaced is sort of a bummer, yet those were the reasonable surprises. The truly monumental surprise - the surprise of all surprises - was that we could not get a broadband Internet connection at my new home.

You might say to yourself, "well, clearly this guy is a dummy, moving into a house without checking for broadband first." Alas, this is not true. Being the computer geek I am, before I even made an offer on the house, I contacted the local phone company to make certain DSL was available. To prove I am the geek of geeks, I also contacted AT&T to verify that cable modem service was there. The answers? Verizon, aka "The Company That Makes Qwest Look Good", told me that they could have DSL online at my home when I moved in. Great. AT&T told me that cable modem service would be available by the time I closed. Double great.

This was all especially important since we pretend to run a web design company in our 'free time', and it would be quite impossible for us to manage all of the sites from a dial-up Internet connection. We were one of the first home users to have DSL in the country with a 1meg connection in Seattle for the past three years. We have grown so used to broadband that the mere mention of "modem" could give me a rash for six days. So, clearly we could never move anywhere that would not have the fastest Internet pipe available.

I thought to myself, "Kirkland, the place where Microsoft yuppies live .. Surely every home in the city is wired with T3 connections. How could this go wrong?"

Now for reality … After making an offer on the new home and having it accepted, the oh-so-wonderful Verizon suddenly changed their tune on DSL connections. This time when I called to order service they told me that they could not take the DSL order until the phone connection was set up, and that it would be another thirty days after that time before I have DSL. So, feeling a little annoyed with that, I called up AT&T and ordered cable modem service, only to find out that they delayed implementation for a month.

So, that means thirty days without broadband. No problem, right? Certainly I could make it for thirty days on dial-up. Of course, at the end of the thirty days I received a postcard from Verizon (yes, a postcard) saying that my line was re-tested and found incompatible with DSL service. No further explanation. I called up Verizon to find out what exactly was wrong. They (surprise!) have no friggin idea. I ask if I could pay for whatever was wrong, even if found on their end, so I could get DSL. No. They recommended installing another phone line and trying it with that. Another thirty day wait. I am a geek. I ordered a second line and DSL.

At this time I call back AT&T. Once again delayed, this time for two more months. Not bad enough? A month later, I get another postcard from Verizon saying that the new phone line did not pass either. The only bright spot here is that I now have two Verizon DSL routers in my office collecting dust. (Aside: Phone companies call these things 'DSL modems', but these are not modulator / demodulators since they never communicate in analog. Hence the reason I use the correct term 'DSL router'.)

During all of this I had to find a solution to my lack of Internet connection. Do you know what I discovered? Much to my astonishment, a dial-up Internet connection can actually be all right. Certainly, you are going to have to do some work to make it enjoyable, but once you have it set up correctly, it can be every bit as nice as DSL or cable modem. Just a little slower.

Here are some of the advantages of a DSL or cable modem home network:
1. The Internet connection can be networked to all home devices.
2. The Internet connection is always on.
3. DHCP services. (automagically hands out IP addresses.)
4. Oh, and it tends to run much faster, too.

What I realized, as I cursed every time I heard the name AT&T or Verizon, was that I could have all of these without the fast speed. In fact, I could even speed up the service, too. All I needed to do was take an old 486 computer I had sitting in the corner, install Red Hat Linux, hook it to the network, and configure it for the job. Here is what the operation involved:

1. Configure PPP dial-up connection into my ISP and configure to automatically reconnect any time the connection is dropped.
2. Set up a NAT (Network Address Translation) of all devices on my home network, and serve as a firewall.
3. DHCP server configuration for handing out IP addresses to all of my home systems.
4. Proxy server configuration for caching web sites and firewall, so it speeds up web access when a site is visited more than once.

The results? When I come home, I turn on my wireless laptop and can immediately browse the web and check email from anywhere in the house (thanks to a wireless hub). No need to worry about IP addresses, or dialing up to the Internet. No worries about hackers intruding on my little domain. The only thing I am missing is a super fast connection, but I barely notice unless I try streaming media or other bandwidth rich content. The truth of this experience has been that having a dial-up connection is not half bad.

Now I hear some of you scoffing, but unless you have tried setting up a network this way, you best hold your judgment. Setting up a Linux box to be the gateway to the Internet gives all of the convenience of DSL, plus some additional security, and actually makes the speed quite livable. Not to mention, I am saving fifty bucks a month. Admittedly, as soon as AT&T or Verizon get their act together I will snatch up their service in a second. At that time my little Linux box will serve on the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) as my firewall, continuing to be my little workhorse. Until that time, I am suddenly not in such desperate need of all that bandwidth. In fact, there has been a moment or two that I have understood why dial-up Internet connections are still rising in the United States faster than broadband connections. I have even thought, once or twice, that if it takes AT&T and Verizon a year to get me service, it will not be half bad.

Well.. I exaggerate. I might make it six months.

For instructions on how to do this yourself, there are numerous fabulous web sites out there, so we opted not to write out the instructions. Here is a good one to get you started:
Red Hat Linux 6.X as an Internet Gateway for a Home Network