Well, I'm thinking of leaving dial up as my ISP is closing. So I'm considering Charter Pipeline.

What I hope to accomplish is to list a plan and have comments on it I've been reviewing the cable modem how to and the DHCP mini how to primarily.

Now to set this up I've started my RTFM and thus far it appears I need to:

1) Setup my on board VIA LAN. Ok, I enabled it in the bios. dmesg | grep eth0 lists a couple lines that seem to indicate it has been found. lsmod also shows some VIA Rhine modules that were loaded. I was also able to manually perform a ifconfig eth0 up and it seems to work.

2) DHCP. Ok, I'm new to DHCP. So I basically followed the mini how to and and renamed my /etc/rc.inet1 to old and copied the recommended one. Next, I modified the last line to: /sbin/dhcpcd -d <<< gotta have that debug flag! Now here's something I don't quite get if I do a ./rc.inet1 restart I get an error message about a file existing (I'll have to get more detail on that). But, if I reboot and then login and do an ifconfig eth0 is listed! I think this is success but the interface is not listed about 5 minutes later. I think this is because I have no cable modem yet and these first two steps were just in preparation. Also dhcpcd is no longer listed in top or pstree.

3) Get a cable modem. What's cheap and good. Are all 2way now. In regards to 1way vs 2way is that service specific or is the modem the only limitations.

4) Sign up for the service...I think only Charter is available in my area. No DSL eithter...good mountain biking though...lol. Any thoughts on Charter? How's the service? I have them for cable at the moment all 8 channels of the basic package...lol.

5) Wire. I have one cable feed to my house that splits 6 ways (of which two go to TVs and one goes to my office awaiting this modem. As I want to perform a self install any signal strength issues I should look for?

6) Security. Well I rely on iptables for that! I don't have a server so only outgoing requests can be responded too. It's pretty limiting. Any specifici issues with cable modems. I'm thinking of taking the interface down when not is use just for additional "physical" security.

Thanks.

1. setup sounds good, the test will come when you're connected

2. i never had to mod my rc.inet1 in slackware to get dhcpcd to work (except to add an -N option for ntp so it wouldn't overwrite a config file).

3. i've heard that motorolla makes good cable modems (surfboard?). i'd probably research and get one of those, or maybe toshiba. charter might even provide one for you free of charge, or for a small charge.

4. maybe check internet/broadband sites for provider reviews

5. my broadband is on a separate cable from the tv cable (roadrunner). i didn't know they could be on the same cable, but i don't really know a lot about that end of it. i was pretty sure they couldn't, though.

6. disconnecting is of course 100% foolproof. but that won't help you when you reconnect and aren't protected. for less drastic measures than physically disconnecting all the time, a cheap broadband hardware router can offer good protection. i have one friend who says he was hacked through the router (i.e., the router was hacked), but i've never heard of that happening anywhere else. and iptables is always available, and is good to know anyway.

hth