CatherineCornelius's Journal: Quiet Christmas

NTL recently introduced broadband to my area, a fact that they failed to tell me about. I found out about it a week or so ago and had them add the 512kbps package to my cable TV account--dropping my current ISP and my second phone line almost pays for the package, so it's a pretty good deal for me. Goodbye, 40kbps connections!

I had some mishaps, such as an ancient firewall that refuses to reboot, but nothing I can't deal with and nothing to do with the NTL service itself, which seems so far to be pretty solid. All you need is a spare ethernet card, a cable, a dhcp client and (for the other machines in the house) IP masquerading. I just transferred the firewall and masquerading duties to another machine that normally does another task.

Since the original firewall is now down and I was considering installing BSD on it anyway, the next step is obvious. I hope that BSD is kind to my old Pentium 90.

One bonus has been that my email configuration was on the old firewall machine, and I have missed a load of work-related email by the simple expedient of not transferring the configuration until I had a basic functional masquerading firewall, which is today. If they really needed me, they have my phone numbers. All in all, the quietest Christmas I can recall in nearly a decade, and I still have nearly a week of holiday left before I have to go back.