[ale] The 12 Q's of Chrismas (Cable-DSL Modem Shopping)

[fgz]

Good morning. Long post of lots of questions follows:

In prep for a cable internet hookup later this month, I 
went on a 'fact-finding mission' at Best Buy and Circuit 
City. Linksys and Seimens<sp?> to look at these things.
Linksys and Seimens<sp?> are the two predominant 
brands at these stores, with the former seeming to have 
the most favorable reviews I've read and heard. There 
were several models of each but the salespeople didn't 
have all the answers to my cable-n00b questions, so 
knowing ALE has some of the greatest IT minds around :), 
I'm asking for info.

1). Quick poll: Linksys, Seimens, or...?

2). VPNs come on some of these. Why should I care 
about VPN on a home LAN? Is there is a chance remote 
config of a SOHO LAN PC might get out on the internet?

3). Seimens mentioned 'VPN pass-through', for example, 
to my corporate VPN. What is that and why do I care
since I run VPN client sw on my a local PC to get to
the corp LAN from home now?

4). Do these distribute bandwidth fractionally to each 
device on the modem, or is it on-demand bandwidth? i.e. 
will the PC casually browsing the web get less overall 
bandwidth than the PC downing a 10MB file?

5). Can you truly hang a hub, or maybe more properly, 
a switch (and maybe even a wireless 11MB hub), from 
one of the modem ports, and expect to get an IP 
properly assigned to each PC off the hub/switch? Does 
the bandwidth get horribly cut at the hub/switch by 
doing this?

6). Specific to Linksys: I saw four (4) 4-port models
at $59-$99, some with firmware VPN, firewall, AV, etc. 
What do I really need for a SOHO LAN, since all PCs
have at least AV anyway? Allegedly the modem firewalls
allow port monitoring and blocking etc, but I'm skeptical.
Is it best practice to run a f/w PC in front of the cable 
modem, then DHCP out to the cable modem itself?

7). If these things are firmware (nobody knew), can 
they be flashed with an upgrade like a PC BIOS?

8). Which Linksys model(s) had the web-config utility 
vulnerability? Can it/those be flashed?

9). What is UPnP? Sounds like a Windows thing.

10). Some have PPPoE. Why, since dialup goes away? Or 
is this for direct serial connection over the internet?

11). Modem rent is $5.00/month, yet $99 purchases one. 
Payout is obvious, yet will purchasing yield a better 
quality product and if so, should I get it before the 
installer comes to avoid any MAC changing hassles later 
and billing snafu's when the cable co says I haven't 
returned their modem? Which brand?

12). Is there any chance that a purchased modem will 
be incompatible with their line sig? If so, what do I 
look for?

The SOHO LAN will be a mixed environment of Linux, 
Win9x, Win2K, Solaris SPARC and i386, three french 
hens, two turtle doves, and a modem maybe under the 
xmas tree....

All comments and suggestions appreciated, much 
thanks, and Merry Christmas!

fgz


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