Fun With DSL

Jan and I are spending the weekend in Wisconsin, visiting friends. Part of that time I’m helping one of them make the jump from dialup to DSL. It took quite a while today to get all the stuff installed, both hardware and software. After a few rounds with confusing instructions, I got her email configured for the new address and all worked fine.

Then I went to Steve Gibson’s GRC site and ran his “Shields Up” network security test program. This revealed quite a few holes with the DSL connection. They were probably there with the dial up but the exposure time is shorter than with the always-on DSL.

Because of this I decided to set up a Linksys router to act as a firewall. Good idea, but the devil is in the details. So far I can’t get the router to play nice with the DSL modem. To complicate matters, Linksys now only includes the manual as a PDF file! I really like paper manuals for this sort of work.

But I’m making progress. With luck I should have it working tomorrow – knock on wood.

One comment on “Fun With DSL

  1. Well, no luck getting the router to work. More research will be needed and then another trip out here to implement it. A software firewall will have to do for the time being. This PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet) stuff is confusing.