[NTLUG:Discuss] Very basic DSL questions

[ddaupert@csc.com]

Sorry to be soooo simple, but this is my first time thru, and I'm not yet
very network savvy.
I've recently been informed I can get DSL in my area (SW Fort Worth) thru
SWBell. I've
listened to the traffic on this group about August.net closing off to new
customers due to
SWBell's biz practices, and that doesn't lessen my anxiety much. Anyways,
here goes.

SWBell has a "special" for $49.+/month, equipment is "free" and the
self-installation kit
is "free," but only for windows. They'll charge me a couple hundred for a
technician
installation. Questions: can I just get the self-installation kit, run
windows in vmware, do
setup, then switch over to linux and configure? Are there any gotchas I
need to know about?

I hear people talking about static IPs, but I *think* this would only be an
issue if I were
going to run a web server or mail server or whatever, right? I'm not
planning on running
any servers on my system. It seems to me they really sock it to you for
static ips. I had
hoped to go thru august.net for isp. I am now an earthlink customer, after
mindspring
got into bed with earthlink, after pipeline got bought out by mindspring.
Earthlink wants
to charge $67.50/month for dsl plus static ip, and on top of swbell wanting
$49.+ plus
their ip fee -- holy cripes. I guess I should just take my beating without
complaint, tho;
for 50 Xs the speed of dial up; let's see, I pay $21/month for dial up, 50
times that would
be Yikes! $1000/month. $120 or so sounds like a deal!

dennis

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