BYO Linux Router To Australia's Fibre Network

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BYO Linux Router To Australia's Fibre Network

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 23, 2010 @07:38PM from the please-live-near-the-coast dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Run a Linux router to connect your ADSL service but worried about what will happen when the Australian Government rolls out fibre broadband to your house or business? Worry no more. It turns out that customers on Australia's new National Broadband Network will be able to run their own homebrew Linux router to connect to the network and route traffic any way they please."

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What's the story? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-05-23 19:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

So, when someone brings a new network connection to your house, via a standard ethernet cable, you'll be allowed to connect a device of your choosing to the end? Socking. This makes the frontpage of slashdot now?
1. Re:What's the story? by Techman83 · 2010-05-23 19:54 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I know a few the tech support guys at my Provider, they're used to me sending logs from my BSD based firewall. A fair percentage of Modem/Routers are linux based anyway. The only real difference here is the termination is no longer a modem provided by the customer. You'll still need something that talks PPPoE to authenticate to the network, be it a hardware based router or a plethora of software based distro
  
  --
  # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i cat
  Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
2. Re:What's the story? by mjwx · 2010-05-23 20:04 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Tonight at 11, "Connecting your fridge to australian intertubes. What will be the minimum legal size for chicken breasts?".
  Dont laugh, I've already soldered an RJ45 connection to the iron. The cat is next.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
3. Re:What's the story? by Thanshin · 2010-05-23 20:07 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Dont laugh, I've already soldered an RJ45 connection to the iron. The cat is next.
  I think soldering an RJ45 to your cat will probably kill it.
  I case I misunderstood you, ironing your cat will also kill it.
4. Re:What's the story? by Techman83 · 2010-05-23 20:07 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Well if you use an atom it's not _that_ power hungry and those little routers just don't have the memory/performance.
  
  --
  # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i cat
  Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
5. Re:What's the story? by jrumney · 2010-05-23 20:23 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  If you're running any servers, you have the power hungry box anyway.
6. Re:What's the story? by TheThiefMaster · 2010-05-23 20:24 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  If anyone wants to build their own router and is concerned about power usage, size, heat or noise (i.e. doesn't want to use an old desktop) I would recommend them to look into mini-itx systems. The power supplies for an entire typical mini-itx are rated lower than the cpu alone requires in a desktop. They can be made not only fanless, but completely moving-parts-free. And best of all, they're not much larger than the router you'd be replacing!
  It's not cheap though, unfortunately.
7. Re:What's the story? by rjch · 2010-05-23 20:32 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Dont laugh, I've already soldered an RJ45 connection to the iron. The cat is next.
  I think soldering an RJ45 to your cat will probably kill it.
  Yeah, RJ45 connectors are plastic and will melt easily. Much better just to crimp it to the cat. Just make sure you get out of the way very quickly afterwards.
8. Re:What's the story? by jimicus · 2010-05-23 20:39 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  I think soldering anything to a cat puts the solderer at greater risk than the solderee.
9. Re:What's the story? by dangitman · 2010-05-23 20:52 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Dont laugh, I've already soldered an RJ45 connection to the iron. The cat is next.
  Are you using CAT-5e or CAT-6?
  
  --
  ... and then they built the supercollider.
10. Re:What's the story? by MichaelSmith · 2010-05-23 21:05 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  We had this pot belly stove in the corner of the living room and during the summer the cat loved to use it to survey the room at eye level but when we used it for the first time in the autumn there was this horrible screech and the cat rocketed across the living room, into the kitchen and stopped, buffing, under the kitchen table.
  The treatment for burns is immediate immersion in cold water and fortunately the bath was half full so I picked up the cat and started to "immerse" the patient in the water. I tell you, the resulting scratches lasted months.
  
  --
  http://michaelsmith.id.au
As one would expect nowadays, but ... by wilfie · 2010-05-23 19:52 · Score: 4, Informative

Virgin in the UK used to refuse support until you connected a Mac or Windows box directly. Routers were 'not supported'.
1. Re:As one would expect nowadays, but ... by Zontar+The+Mindless · 2010-05-23 20:05 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Telstra used to have the same requirement. IIRC, you couldn't get online at all except by using their crappy connect-ware on a Windows box (and cloning the MAC address to your router didn't work).
  I was sooo glad when I moved into an area where I could get service from Internode -- "If it speaks TCP/IP and it works for you, it works for us, too." Heaven.
  So, yes, this is news.
  
  --
  Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
2. Re:As one would expect nowadays, but ... by mikael_j · 2010-05-23 21:28 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I was sooo glad when I moved into an area where I could get service from Internode -- "If it speaks TCP/IP and it works for you, it works for us, too." Heaven.
  The downside to policies like that is of course obvious if you've ever worked tech support for an ISP, you get some pretty scary setups that people are trying to bring online. I really didn't mind the truly insane stuff like the guys with 15 year old Amiga towers running some binary hacked version of AmigaOS and various hacked together pieces of hardware, at least those guys knew what they were doing (even if their hardware and software did strange things), it was the guy running Mac OS 9 with IE5 or Win95 OSR2 with Netscape 4.x that hurt, because while the former guys were well aware of just how crazy they were the latter group tended to fly into rants about how their 30 year old car still ran like a charm so why wouldn't a ten year old computer work as well as a new one (to those about to tell me that getting OS 9 or Win95 online really isn't that hard, well no, it isn't, not if you're at the machine, it's got all the necessary drivers and a somewhat fresh operating system install, if you're trying to guide someone who hates computers with a vengeance over the phone and he's using a computer that's been mismanaged since the first day he owned it, yeah, good luck with that).
  
  --
  Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
3. Re:As one would expect nowadays, but ... by dropadrop · 2010-05-24 02:00 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Allowing using any devices and supporting them is not the same thing.
4. Re:As one would expect nowadays, but ... by XMode · 2010-05-24 02:07 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Bah.. That's nothing.. Our 'any router will do' policy once got me in to an argument with a customer that lasted a good 20 mins. When I advised him for the 5th time that while he had a router, he would ALSO need some form of computer to get internet pages, he demanded to speak to my supervisor.
This is news? by Osty · 2010-05-23 20:11 · Score: 4, Informative

Doesn't every ISP allow you to do this? Your ISP provides with a modem of the correct type (DSL or cable) and you provide your own router. If they give you a modem that is also a router, you can turn that off or ask them for a plain old modem. With many ISPs, at least in the US, you can even provide your own modem.
I've been running my own Linux router for the past 12 years across multiple ISPs, from T1 providers back in college to DSL providers to Comcast, and have never had a problem doing so. The tech support may be clueless if you call ("Did you reboot your router?" "Let me do that ...
1. Re:This is news? by kestasjk · 2010-05-23 20:35 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I'm in Australia (Perth), I have my own modem and use a FreeBSD gateway (so that I can use PF for firewalling and traffic queuing; for Skype and gaming at the same time), which I've been using for ~6 years and over two ISPs.
  
  So to answer your question; no, this isn't news. If the new proposed national broadband network didn't allow a router of choice that would be news, because that would be absolutely ridiculous.
  
  --
  // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
2. Re:This is news? by cheater512 · 2010-05-23 20:36 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  This skips the router.
  Ethernet cable out of the wall goes straight to your Linux box. Nothing inbetween.
breaking news by Anonymous Coward · 2010-05-23 20:24 · Score: 5, Funny

linux users will also still be able to use the national electricity network to power their devices.
1. Re:breaking news by GigaplexNZ · 2010-05-23 21:17 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Darn, so buying that generator was a waste of time.
Thats nice but... by Eth1csGrad1ent · 2010-05-23 21:08 · Score: 2, Insightful

..once the filter kicks in the Internet will stop at your ISP... a bit like owning a ferrari in Antarctica
Re:Free internet filtering! by MichaelSmith · 2010-05-23 21:13 · Score: 3, Funny

Not. Yet.
Though I do check /s/ every night after the wife has gone to bed purely to make sure it is still there.

--
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2010-05-23 22:00 · Score: 2, Informative

Comment removed based on user account deletion