[GLLUG] DHCP

[Matt Graham]

On Thursday 27 June 2002 18:00, after a long battle with technology, 
Jeff Lawton wrote:

> business@servicesbywilliams.com wrote:
>> Also, they do not "recommend" non
>> Windows PC's using the satellite for internet
>> communications.  Anyone see any issues with using a
>> linux box?

Yes.  Satellite "broadband" services have special requirements, because 
the latency is huge (1/2 second round-trip for packets.)  I've seen 
messages on Usenet (comp.os.linux.misc and .networking) where people 
have tried to use this sort of service with non-Doze machines and 
reported even more horrible performance than you'd normally get.

The problem is that typically, when you make a connection to a remote 
website, your machine sends a SYN, waits for the ACK (connection made), 
then sends a (small) HTTP request.  The machine at the other end ACKs 
("received request OK") and then sends data back.  Your machine has to 
ACK every MTU-size bytes so the remote machine knows that the data was 
received OK, then when the remote machine is finished, it has to send a 
PUSH FIN packet.

All these small packets going back and forth *really* hurt when the 
latency is high, as it is in anything involving satellites.  The 
Windoze drivers for this satellite thing use some sort of proprietary 
protocol that's not quite TCP and gets rid of most of that small-packet 
overhead, so you're not waiting half a second every 1500 bytes.

Details on how this protocol works will be released when Satan starts 
wearing ice-skates, naturally.

>> We want to set up a home network with two PC's, one
>> windows based, one linux based.  We currently have a
>> hub, 2 windows PCs and are using broadband with DHCP.

Jeff Lawton wrote:
> Ipcop.com does firewall routing dhcp (easy to set up and manage)
> works great on old hardware.
> Once you have the router firewall set up the isp will not be able to
> see the inside unless you open a service and then only what you open.

That's true enough, but considering the realities as described above, 
the OP will have a much better "Internet experience" if he/she throws 
Lose98SE on some old machine with 2 NICs and turns on "Internet 
Connection Sharing".  It wouldn't surprise me, though, if the Windows 
drivers for the satellite connection disable/break Windows ICS, and you 
can't re-enable it unless you pay a few dollars more.

-- 
   "The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a
   word processor.', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about
   drugs.' "   -- Roy Blount, Jr.
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see