High Speed Internet and Modems and stuff

[Kevin Cozens]

Howard Gibson wrote:

>Also, someone else asked me about Linux and USB modems.  I have directed him to the Linux USB website. http://www.linux-usb.org/, which looks informative.  Is there personal experience out there I can pass on?
>
Peter Hiscocks wrote:

>My experience is that USB modems don't work with Linux.
>
I am surprised that Peter wasn't able to get a USB (cable?) modem 
working. I made the switch to from dial-up to Rogers for high speed 
Internet access back in August of 2004. I ordered it as a self-install. 
Two guys from Rogers came. Once the wiring was in place the modem was 
connected to the line and tested. After that it was up to me to get it 
going with my computer.

Unlike in the past, I was not given a NIC. The cable modem only came 
with a USB cable. I wanted to use a USB connection to the cable modem 
anyway since my NIC is used to connect to my laptop. My only concern was 
how hard it would be to configure Linux to use a cable modem as I 
remembered the difficulties many people on this list had trying to get 
their Linux boxes set up in the early days of cable based access to the net.

Setting up the Windows side of the machine was no problem. Setting up 
the Linux side of my machine turned out to be a lot easier than I 
expected. My cable modem back then was a Motoroloa Terayon TJ615. I 
eventualy found that the key to getting it working under Linux was to 
select "CDC Ethernet" as the driver for the network interface. The other 
thing I discovered was that the cable modem interface should be started 
first so it can set the default gateway. If any other network interfaces 
start before the cable modem interface make sure they don't set a 
default gateway or you will have trouble accessing the net.

My TJ615 developed some flakiness after a couple of months (it would 
drop the link to the net and require power cycling to get back on line). 
Eventually, I had Rogers return to take another look at the modem (the 
first person who looked at it didn't really do anything). The two guys 
that showed up had a new modem in hand. Apparantly, when they hear of 
reports of problems and a TJ615 is involved, they just swap the modem. I 
now have a Motorola Surfboard 5100 cable modem still connected to my PC 
via a USB link. It has been working and reliable ever since it was first 
plugged in. I didn't even have to change the driver. It also worked just 
fine using the CDC Ethernet driver. Top speeds I have seen during file 
transfers have hit 355kB/s. Sure beats 56k dial-up!

-- 
Cheers!

Kevin.  (http://www.interlog.com/~kcozens/)

Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172        |"What are we going to do today, Borg?"
E-mail:kcozens at interlog dot com|"Same thing we always do, Pinkutus:
Packet:ve3syb at ve3yra.#con.on.ca.na|  Try to assimilate the world!"
#include <disclaimer/favourite>   |              -Pinkutus & the Borg

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