oinkfreebiker@att.net writes:

>Are there instructions or comments anywhere about
>connecting NetBSD to DSL or Cable Modem?
>
>I'm leaning toward DSL, and searched the port-i386
>archive for DSL as far back as January, finding naught.

I have DSL and @home connected to a NetBSD box.  8 addr
block on the DSL line and one address on the @home connection.

http://rockhead.com/diagrams/rockhead.current.jpg is a fairly 
current schematic of the configuration.  (It's just a 144x144 
DSL line so if everybody hits it at once it will start timing 
out.  It's not intended to be a commercial site.)  (The serial-? 
machines are hardly ever powered up anymore, so don't ask. ;)
(The "(Xdsl)" is waiting on my getting around to trenching from 
the street to the house so I can run more wire.)

My only serious complaint is that NAT seems to break a bit
when the kernel gets out of sync with userland.  At least
that's what it looks like to me.  The command to route traffic
back out the interface it came in on usually stops working
until I get them sync'd up again.  The basic mapping of address
x to address y seems to work ok.

>I'm thinking to pick up an older computer, load NetBSD
>onto it, and employ it as a firewall/router at my home. I
>want to be able to dial into it from telephone, or
>telnet (or ssh) in via the always-on web. Samba and VNC
>look pretty cool. I really want to do something with both
>of those. And in general, I want to get some on-line
>things going so that I can play around with them and
>learn how best they work, etc... I've a chance to
>introduce NetBSD at work too, if I can get VNC online to

I should probably upgrade to VNC, but my "pppd tunneled through
ssh" VPN's are stable and I hesitate to mess with them.

>my four networked NT's via NetBSD. I've already got it
>networked in (ping-able is all) and have a chance to play
>around some.
>
>But first I must decide upon an ISP, DSL or cable modem.

I've found that while cable is cheap, it is also unreliable.
My VPN's will try the other interface when they have connection
problems.  They always end up on the DSL line.

>And none of the providers say anything about connecting
>to Unix. Does anyone have happy/unhappy experiences
>specific to NetBSD with DSL or cable modem?

My experience with @home is; when I call to report outages I'm told
they don't support Unix (so I have to connect to my wifes machine
[which she hates] so I can run ping for them), and they claim they
don't support fixed IP addresses, but always end up assigning me one
(the Redwood City technical gang does).

Good luck,
Paul