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stevenv

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My girlfriend is having some domestic issues with their current ADSL setup i.e. her brother finishing the cap! She really needs internet access and I'm thinking of advising them on what to do. My idea is to setup an account with another ISP on a prepaid system as she will not be a heavy bandwidth user. My question is: will it be possible to have another ADSL device connected to the same phone line as their current router? i.e. does Telkom allow multiple connections on the line. And second to that (to keep life simple) can anybody recommend a decent USB ADSL modem? I've read that there are sometimes power related issues with these devices, she will be connecting it to her notebook which is usually in the docking station. And if anyone has actually setup such a modem, can you tell me how its usually configured (I've setup routers plenty of times, don't know if its the same though)?

Thanks!
 
Don't buy another ADSL modem, because you can't use more than one ADSL modem on a single ADSL-active phone line. What I would do is as follows:

1. Either way you go, you're going to have to set the current modem into bridged mode if it's currently in Router mode (Router mode: dialing up from the modem/router and sharing internet from there).

* If money isn't such an issue:
Buy a small linux router, such as the Linksys WRT54G. This will set you back about R600, but the router will connect the additional account and be the gateway for your girlfriend's PC and everything will be pretty transparent to the user.
This will require half-bridging on the current ADSL modem though. The other PC's will still use the current ADSL modem as their gateway.

* If money is an issue:
Create a PPPoE (Broadband) connection on each PC with the ISP login details which will be used on that PC. This wont require the current router to support half-bridging, but the side effect is that each PC will have to 'dial up'.
 
1. You already have a router, use that or replace it with another, you cannot have 2 routers on the same telephone line.
2. You have to see if your router supports bridge or half bridge mode, if it does, then you don't have to replace it.
3. If it supports half bridge mode:
- Contact the ISP of your choice and get her her own ADSL account with it's own login and password.
- Turn the half-bridge mode on if needed.
- Go to her machine, and create a PPPOE dial up connection that she must use when she wants to connect.
- Make sure that windoze firewall is running and configured properly, she is bypassing the router's firewall by doing this.
- Problem solved.
4. If it supports bridge mode:
- Contact the ISP of your choice and get her her own ADSL account with it's own login and password.
- Get the login and password for the existing ISP connection from whomever knows it.
- Turn on bridge mode (Note - nobody will be able to connect to the internet anymore)
- Go to her machine, and create a PPPOE dial up connection that she must use when she wants to connect.
- Make sure that windoze firewall is running and configured properly, she is bypassing the router's firewall by doing this.
- Go to his machine, and create a PPPOE dial up connection that he must use when he wants to connect.
- Make sure that windoze firewall is running and configured properly, he is bypassing the router's firewall by doing this.
- Problem solved, but they both have to dial-up before connecting.

Questions?
 
Thats awesome, thanks so much for the information! I didn't actually realise you could specify the ISP logon credentials on the machine itself, thought it was always specified on the router.

So basically I need to check up on the router and find out what the support is for bridging and if it does, I'll setup PPPoE connections on at least her machine (depending on half vs full support on the router). Once the connection is setup, enabling that connection will connect her with her own ISP.

A question on half bridge mode: if there's an ISP specified on the router, how does the OS (Windows XP) on her machine determine which ISP connection to use if she's still connected to the wireless LAN? Is there some kind of prioritization that uses the PPPoE connection or is it something that needs to be configured on the router?

Last one: on my own network I've always relied on the router's built-in firewall as my primary security layer, using the Windows firewall as some kind of secondary layer. How does the Windows firewall compare to those on the router? It probably depends on the manufacturer.

Thanks again for your help!
 
Last edited:
stevenv said:
Thats awesome, thanks so much for the information! I didn't actually realise you could specify the ISP logon credentials on the machine itself, thought it was always specified on the router.

So basically I need to check up on the router and find out what the support is for bridging and if it does, I'll setup PPPoE connections on at least her machine (depending on half vs full support on the router). Once the connection is setup, enabling that connection will connect her with her own ISP.

A question on half bridge mode: if there's an ISP specified on the router, how does the OS (Windows XP) on her machine determine which ISP connection to use if she's still connected to the wireless LAN? Is there some kind of prioritization that uses the PPPoE connection or is it something that needs to be configured on the router?

Last one: on my own network I've always relied on the router's built-in firewall as my primary security layer, using the Windows firewall as some kind of secondary layer. How does the Windows firewall compare to those on the router? It probably depends on the manufacturer.

Thanks again for your help!
Click to expand...
Half bridge mode means that the router still does it's own thing, connecting to the ISP and providing the default route point for outging data, while at the same time allowing PPPOE connections to be initiated from inside the network and bridging those through to the exchange.

i.e. Half Bridge mode is the best of both worlds.

Windows firewall will block the ports that you tell it to block, and will work fine. But, the problem will all firewalls is that if something does get behind the firewall and initiates a connection, wham ... you may as well not have a firewall.

The biggest risk with windows firewall is the user who will turn it off when you least expect them to, or will download something and run it, and that something will turn off the firewall.

:D
 
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