February 2004 - Broadband

The following links and information is provided to back up the February 2004 meeting on the whys and wherefores of Broadband.

AdslGuide : http://adslguide.org.uk/

An excellent broadband news site, despite the name they have news on cable, wireless and Satellite too. The ISP rating and comparison charts are on this site as well as the how adsl works diagrams.

HowStuffWorks : Computer Channel : http://computer.howstuffworks.com/

Many of the explanations of how broadband and home networks work came from here.

Home of Shields Up : http://grc.com/

The test your computer security and firewall site. Shields up was the firewall scanner facility shown.

IPCop : http://ipcop.org/

The Linux based home firewall system was IPCop.

The ADSL router cited as having excellent performance on long telephone lines was an Alcatel 510(i)v4 although I would expect that all of their similar vintage routers would be as good.

The type of firewall recommended was an SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) one, these interpret and track all traffic through the firewall and therefore are better at rejecting bad traffic while still allowing more complex traffic like video conferencing, instant messaging and in some cases ftp.