[lug] More cable modem product Q's

[Peter Hutnick]

> Now for the cable modem gurus (or those with mild experience that do not
>  consider themselves gurus), I curious about another option. There are
> dedicated cable modem router/firewall boxes for roughly $90 (one would
> still need a cable modem) with 4 ports available, and capable of up to
> 253 machines if you use switches. I will have to drop by a store and
> read the box, but does anyone know if these are typically limited by
> working as a proxy, or if they work fine with every box involved having
> its own DHCP address (I want real addresses to come in from outside with
>  on occasion)?

They use limited NAT (much like IPMASQ).  They have no proxying ability.

Most will let you forward ports in such a way that a certain port on a
NATed box looks like a port (same (i.e. 80->80) or different (i.e.
80->8080)) on the routeable IP.  I run a webserver on one of my home boxes
and use this for webmail*.

Most Will also let you define a "DMZ host" which, as far as I can tell,
just does the above on all ports to the same port on one NATed host.

> PS: My phone service only gets worse. Since the problems started, I have
>  never had over 37.3 kbps, before about a month ago, I never got below
> 48  kbps. Currently, all online games are useless (not that I should
> worry  about games, but heck, it keeps me out of trouble).

Lucky dog.  I get 24k.  Period.

-Peter

* I have an SMC box that does this as well as 802.11b and print serving. 
I don't recommend it, as it is flaky as shit, but it /does/ have the
super-fly feature of having a serial port that can be used for console
management or _as the WAN connection_!  (Yes, you read that right, I run a
wireless network with a 24k Internet connection!)

-P