[svlug] DSL working with some weirdo hardware in a robot submarine

[Joe Buck]

On Sat, Feb 03, 2007 at 01:37:25PM -0800, Daniel Gimpelevich wrote:
> Umm, DSL (the distro) has a PPPoE client that probably works as well as
> any other. Popular ISPs providing DSL (the technology) in the Bay Area do
> not use PPPoE for anything, with the sole exception of AT&T/Yahoo. TMK, no
> ISP around here has ever pushed a USB-only broadband solution. The "Debian
> overhead" to which Bruce referred comes from the mistaken notion that
> using Debian packages on DSL (the distro) is a good idea.

This kind of stuff really doesn't matter in practice.  Most people have
more than one computer, or else they have a laptop with wireless, so they
aren't going to want to plug a single computer directly into the ADSL
line.  You can get a little box that combines an ADSL modem with a router
and wireless support, and then the machines you plug into it just see
a normal Ethernet with a DHCP server, so all is well.  That little box
almost certainly runs Linux inside as well.  The new ones can autodetect
whether they should run pppoe or if they're on straight ethernet or what
have you.

(I finally dumped the piece-of-crap Speedstream box SBC/AT&T gives you;
it sucks and I've had a rock-solid connection since I went with the
USRobotics ADSL router; it's an embedded Linux device you can ssh into;
it runs BusyBox).

My guess is that at least a quarter of America is now running Linux at home
somewhere; it's either in their Linksys box or their Tivo or their cell
phone or somewhere.