Getting your LAN onto ADSL
Assuming you've checked on the BT website whether or not ADSL is accessible from where you are, the first thing to consider when getting broadband is, can I really afford it? Even after price cuts, you are likely to be shelling out around L30 a month for the service, and anywhere between L50-L300 for the hardware to get started. For a lot of people, this is just going to be too expensive, despite the BT price reductions.
With the intention of cutting down on prices as much as possible, I went hunting around the big boys for the best prices I could find for installation, hardware, and monthly fees.
Freeserve, BT and Pipex all offer a similar service. This is what's known as 'wires-only' - no installation is needed by a BT engineer. To go into this, let's have a little overview of ADSL technology...
ADSL (Asychronous Digital Subscriber Line) works over a normal phone line. It transmits data over frequencies not used by the normal telephone system and, since these frequencies are pretty wide, allows for data transmission of around 50 k/s rather than the normal 5 k/s of a modem connection. However, these frequencies are audible over the phone, and so you need 'micro-filters' connected to each of your phones so that that the ADSL and speech don't interefere with each other. For your average household then, you will need your adsl equipment connected to a microsplitter to a phone socket, then each of your phones connected to a microfilter to the phone socket. Pretty simple, and it saves paying L150 for a BT engineer to come and split your line for you. The microfilters are around L8 wherever you get them, and it's usually simpler to just grab them from your DSL supplier. Since DSL uses different frequencies, your phone line isn't tied up while you have broadband connected.
So, on to the packages. As I said, the 3 major players offer similar services, but their price-points and specific packages differ. Freeserve and BT both offer the standard package which is provided by BT wholesale division...for the next month, they waive the setup charge of L65. The monthly fee is L29.99 including VAT, and you have to buy a package consisting of the Alcatel 'frog' modem and 2 microfilters for L85. The minimum contract on both these packages is 12 months, so if you want to move house or cancel, you're stuck paying for broadband you're not using. Not a bad package...however, take a look at the Pipex package and things are infinitely better...no setup fee, L24 a month for access, no compulsory modem purchases and no fixed contract. A no-brainer? I certainly thought so. Allowing you to choose your own equipment is fantastic, since it means that you can plump straight for your preferred option of hardware, rather than putting up with the (ludicrously unstable) frog. Once chosen, it's simply a case of tapping in your address and credit card details, and awaiting your username and password to turn up in the post!
That done, and username, password and connection details in hand (all in a little leaflet from Pipex :) you have 3 choices of how to setup your network to connect to your chosen service.
OPTION 1 : Windows Internet Connection Sharing. Cheap, and (fairly) cheerful, this is the most cost-effective way. Simply connect a modem to one computer, then set up the other machines on the LAN to connect to the internet through it. However, not really reliable, it means your main rig has to be permanently on, and pretty slow :(
OPTION 2 : Dedicated machine. This involves setting up a dedicated, low-spec machine (something like a P200) which acts as a web-server machine. Connect your broadband modem to this, and install a broadband OS like Smoothwall which just means that the machine sits there and acts as a router. It assigns your IPs, sends you your webpages, and everything is hunky-dory. This is a very good option, but it does require you to have an old machine hanging around, and Smoothwall can be a bit of a pain to get going.
OPTION 3 : Router. This is the option I'm going with in this article, since it is, in my opinion, the best option (albeit the most expensive). A router is like a little mini-machine all on its own...connect it to the network, connect the DSL in the other end, and it mosies along, assigning IPs to your network, handling all the DSL connection stuff, sending you your pages, and generally looking neat on your shelf. You can buy a router with or without a 10/100 switch built in, depending on whether or not you already have a switch hooked up in your network. I'd heard very good things about the Zyxel Prestige series of routers, and so I contacted the lovely bods at Electronic Frontier to get one to have a look at (cheers Conor, you da man!) Turn the page for a router extravaganza...