[plug] adsl opinions & clarification & DSL300

[Scott Middleton]

Hi all

Bret wrote:

    What exactly does that mean, regarding LinuxIT/LinuxWA and Conceptual? 
    Is/was Conceptual part of LinuxIT/LinuxWA?

Yes we have left conceptual for reasons I wont go into here. We are now
reselling for Westnet. LinuxWA now LinuxIT  was never anything more than
a reseller for Concept.

    There was something with Conceptual (I believe that is what used to be 
    WASP), where their ADSL appeared to be for Windows only, and only 
    capable of serving a single PC connection (could not be connected to a 
    gateway PC on a LAN), from the information that I got from them about 
    ADSL. Apart from that, there was an advisory notice that Conceptual 
    payments would no longer be accepted at LinuxIT/LinuxWA. Also, the ADSL
    modems available from Conceptual/WASP, appeared to be the DL ones that 
    have been damned on this list, and the maximum speed available for 
    normal home use, appeared to be 128kb/s, from the information that I was 
    sent.
Concepts ADSL does work on Linux and it works very well, they use a
bridged connection with a static IP for all their ADSL customers
regardless of how many computers are connected. Many of our business
customers are using Concepts ADSL. You can have 1.5/256 whether it is
for business or home.

Westnet offer both bridged and PPPoE (we went with bridged).  They gave
us a good deal on the amount of static IPs we needed and we have found
their tech support to be fantastic. One of the reasons (in the
beginning) we went with Westnet was because of the amount of Pluggers
which recommended them. Since then every dealing we have had with them
has been positive and refreshing.

On the DSL300 side of things:
With Concept we didn't get any drop outs but when we switched to Westnet
we did.  The only difference between the two connections was the phone
line we used, they were on different T strips but its unlikely that had
anything to do with it. The drop outs lasted from 90 seconds to around
10 mins. We didn't really want to buy a new modem so we contacted
Westnet Tech support and we were told to make some changes in the DSL
300 itself. We were waiting to see how reliable it was before we
informed PLUG. So far it seems to have worked, the changes have been in
effect for 5 days now and we haven't noticed any discernible drop out.
Basically what we had to do was change the operational mode from ANSI to
DMT.
According to Westnet Tech support they got this straight from Dlink
itself.

****try at your own risk****
Connect the console cable and use your favourite terminal program to get
access.

Commands:
itex line down <enter>
itex mode dmt <enter>
config save <enter>
restart <enter>

Please note that it seemed to work for us and we are not recommending it
in any way.

Hope this helps.

    
-- 
Scott Middleton
Member Society of Linux Professionals (WA)
Linux Information Technology
www.linuxit.com.au
scott at linuxit.com.au
ph  (08) 9331 8051
fax (08) 6210 1712

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