All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Data Usage on ISPs

koschei on 2002-04-26T15:13:22

Setup: iMac (from the original five coloured range, it's strawberry). 56kbps internal modem.

The deal: unlimited Internet traffic for an unlimited time, for $30 Aus per month.

The stats: so far, my gf and I have averaged 16Mb a day over the 52 days we've been connected.

For a 56kbps connection, that's not bad =)

I'm contemplating ADSL - just need to check prices and such, and find a job so I can buy the appropriate hardware for it (as far as I know I need something special for it - it's something else to investigate).

At least with ADSL I'll have the PC connected rather than just the Mac. And with the PC connected, the Mac can go through the PC, as can the Acorn.

Now - to modify my program to see how much it would have cost with ADSL for a few of the companies around the place. (I wrote a module Data::FunnelWebInternet::Usage to grab the information - bit of a shite module [it does the bare necessities of the program that used it, and that's it], but it'll be improved as needed. For those wondering, it belongs with that Data::BT module =) ).

use a cheap gateway

jmm on 2002-04-26T16:13:38

At least with ADSL I'll have the PC connected rather than just the Mac. And with the PC connected, the Mac can go through the PC, as can the Acorn.

If you pick up a cheap 486 amd install Linux on it, you could provide network access for all of your machines with either the ADSL or the 56k connection. The 486 could provide a firewall as well as use NAT to make all of your machines share the network access. (It would change all of the messages from any of your machines to the outside world to make them look like they came from the 486, and pass back any replies to the correct machine.) For the ADSL you'd need 2 Ethernet interfaces on the 486, for the 56k you'd need one and a decent serial interface. If you haven't done it before, there'd be some learning involved.

Re:use a cheap gateway

koschei on 2002-04-26T16:29:22

Yep. The PC would have linux running anyway, so... Actually, the Acorn will have BSD soon, most probably - but with its hardware there's no way it can be the gateway (darn '96 proprietary hardware - nice OS though, GUI-wise).

The only reason the PC isn't connected at present, unlike the Mac, is that I don't want to buy a modem unless I have to - iMacs come with a builtin one.

Is there an advantage to having a separate gateway box to user box if they're both running Linux? Other than the fact that I could set the gateway up and forget about it and not worry about network connectively when I overload and crash the other.

Re:use a cheap gateway

jmm on 2002-04-26T16:55:08

Is there an advantage to having a separate gateway box to user box if they're both running Linux? Other than the fact that I could set the gateway up and forget about it and not worry about network connectively when I overload and crash the other.

Having a separate box has a few advantages related to the one you mention:

stability - you tend to run the firewall/gateway on an older, stable release (with the latest security updates applied). The user machine can experiment with newer releases and alternate OSes without breaking the network access for other machines. (That includes rebooting and/or shutting down the user machine.)

security - the firewall/gateway can be stripped down to a bare minimum of programs and services. What isn't there can't be taken advantage of to crack the system. You can experiment with adding services on the user machine, initially testing them locally only, later enabling access through the gateway from the outside world, eventually you could add the service to the gateway/firewall if appropriate.

flexibility - you can place the firewall/gateway where your DSL line and moodem are. The rest of the machines can be scattered around the house - and all of them only need to have access to the local network hub. If the user machine were running the firewall, it might need long cable connections to each of the DSL modem and the network hub, if you wanted to move it elsewhere.