network question - is this unusual?

[Bill Davidsen]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Friday 05 June 2009 00:51:12 Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
>> Gerhard Magnus wrote:
>>> I recently had to deal with my ISP about a connectivity problem that
>>> turned out to be on their end. (The tech referred to linux as lie-nux
>>> and insisted on doing everything in XP which I fortunately had
>>> dual-booted.) But in the process of working through this it was
>>> necessary for me to describe the way I'd set up my LAN here and he
>>> seemed incredulous. This wouldn't bother me except that I've gotten this
>>> reaction before from people in the outside world but never an
>>> explanation. So I'm asking: is there something weird about this
>>> structure? Is there some "better" or more standard setup?
>>>
>>> The DSL modem Actiontec modem provided by Quest plugs into the phone
>>> jack. The Actiontec is an older model with only one ethernet plug. Since
>>> I have four boxes, two of which are dual booting Fedora and XP, I have
>>> an ethernet cable connecting the modem to the DSL plug of a Linksys
>>> router. I then have separate cables connecting the four outlets on the
>>> router to each of the four boxes. (I did all this cabling at a time
>>> before wireless routing was as available and cheap as it is today.)
>>>
>>> Each of the six operating systems (4 linux and 2 XP) has a static IP
>>> address and each has a firewall. I have NFS running on the linux
>>> systems. There's another firewall on the router, which is currently
>>> port-forwarding only ssh and torrent data from the outside world.
>>>
>>> I thought I'd check this out before going further....
>>>
>> Well, I only have 2 PCs and a printer with wired connections - the
>> rest are wireless connections. I also have a virtual machine or two
>> with a bridged connection. They all go through a Netgear wireless
>> router. I have static addresses for most of the machines, but I did
>> it using the dhcp server configuration. (If I change NICs, I have to
>> change the dhcp server configuration.)
>>
>> About the only strange this is that I have 2 IP addresses set up for
>> my laptop - one for the wired connection, and one for the wired
>> connection. (3 if you count when it makes a VPN connection from
>> somewhere else...)
>>
> Isn't it unusual to connect the modem to the DSL socket on the router?  The 
> only time I've set up one where I had to use the supplied modem I used the 
> router as a switch, connecting the modem to one of the LAN sockets.
> 
I assumed he was just using the wrong nomenclature, since it appears to be 
impossible to do, the DSl socket has to be POTs (four wire) not RJ45 (XbaseT). 
So I assumed that he just meant the external network socket, which he called the 
DSL socket. Or maybe he has a router with an interesting labeling, who knows.

I really don't see how he gets all those static IPs, unless he means private 
network IPs not available to the outside.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot