[plug] westnet ADSL problems with Debian

[ryan at is.as.geeky.as]

> > Not sure if this is linked, but the last week or so
> > I've also been having huge dropout problems... it's
> > been redialling 2-3 times per day on average, whereas
> > it used to go at least a week. (This is on Netspace,
> > not Westnet.)

> Sadly, wesnet support can't really help me since it appears to be a
> problem local to my systems (and a few others?), other linux users
> aren't having it with them. I'm considering ditching the debian install
> on the firewall and putting on smoothwall or something to see if that
> fixes it - but I /like/ having a flexible firewall.

FWIW, Smoothwall uses Roaring Penguin just the same as you would on Debian,
I'm with arachnet and both Debian and Smoothwall perform identically (with
a DSL-300).  That might save you the trouble of trying, unless of course it
is some freak Debian qwerk.  That said it only took 4 minutes to get my
SmoothWall box back online after it completely died - using the CD.

Nobody said you have to live with SmoothWall's default rules.  Just put it
on a different box (486 is fine) and portfoward everything worthy to the
Linux box.  Then it simply becomes a power chewing phone extention that
makes really lousy graphs - I've got my Debian box MRTG graphing the
SmoothWall interfaces via several underhanded methods rather than using the
SmoothWall ipacc stuff, much nicer :)

I'm actually going to consolidate back to one machine shortly, it's all
getting too noisy in my cupboard.

Ryan