Getting DSL

I gave up. I wanted to get a Cable modem (2mbit up and down!) but they are still a long way from making it available at my place so with the help of a friend who works at my telephone provider I will have DSL on the 15th of next month (instead of the 14 weeks waiting period).

The only problem I saw was that my Wireless LAN Gateway can’t really do DSL so I thought I’d need to use my laptop, which has a broken screen anyway, as a server.

When I got the DSL Modem from Net-Cologne (the telephone company) today it included a special user guide done by Net-Cologne themselves. The ADSL modem itself didn’t include any documentation. How weird. Then I wondered. They only want you to connect one PC to the modem, everything else would be against their rules. But hey, who cares for rules. I started looking and found the documentation.

A wonderful device. I can access it via telnet and a browser, set up the DSL config, username and password, if it should stay connected or cut the connection after a given time, DNS forwarding, DHCP if I want and even a simple firewall based on IP addresses that are allowed to connect. Who would have thought that they give me such wonderful hardware for free ;)

All my worries are settled now and everything will work just fine. When I told my friend he was more than a bit surprised what the device can do. He’s not that technical but wouldn’t have thought that Net-Cologne does something like that anyway.

The only problem I still see is if the device is possibly configured to not give access to the management console. But I will see about that later.