Best of the ISP-Lists

General

ISDN: How Cheap is Too Cheap?

Members of the ISP-Tech list look at limits of ISDN services, demonstrating the level of dial-in service you could provide for a very low setup price.

[November 14, 2002]

In October, DB logged on from France to ask members of the ISP-Tech list:

"Hi all, I own a little computer shop. Unfortunately, xDSL technology is not available in our location. I want to install ISDN, but I want my technicians to be able to access the Internet when they are at client's home or office. The dial-in will also be for my personal use and for my friends. I want to install a Linux e-mail server.

Here are my questions:

• How many 56 Kbps dial-in connections can the ISDN (128 Kbps) support?
• Which Linux distribution do you recommend for this?
• Which remote access server (RAS) will do the job at the lowest price?
• We are not a Linux shop, but we want to use this project to learn it. Do you know where can I find information to help me (book, URL, etc.)?
• Will ISDN support a mail server?
• What computer equipment do I need (power of CPU, memory, RAID)?
• What other important stuff will I need (RADIUS, SQL)?"

[SH advised] "It really depends on what you want to do with it and what you are willing to spend. My guess is you want to KISS (keep it simple stupid). I would not allow more than two users to dial-in to a server feed with 128 Kbps. Since the dial-in lines would not be digital, the fastest they would run is 33.6 Kbps even with 56 Kbps modems—and that is at best with good line quality at both ends. Actually, 14.4 Kbps or 28.8 Kbps might be more realistic

If you choose to follow KISS, you would get: one Linux box with SUSE LINUX 8.1 containing one ISDN PCI card internal as the serial port only reaches speed of 115 Kbps, 1 Ethernet card for the PCs in the store, and two 33.6 Kbps modems.

Just remember that when you're talking sharing bandwith, 128 Kbps isn't much!

SUSE LINUX 8.1 has a very nice yast2 GUI for configuring firewall and also NAT routing. Plan on installing webmin for easy remote configuration. Both SUSE LINUX and webmin are free downloads! SUSE 8.1 also does all the legwork for PPP dial-in access whenever a UNIX user is added. It's a simple solution! SUSE also comes with the Apache Web server and a couple of POP3 SNMP and IMAP server possibilities as well as a samba server for Windows file sharing.

But for good dial-in and good bandwidth services you might want to consider T-1 data and T-1 PRI (telco lines). You could support many customers' dial-in as well as dial-in ISDN and make some money while you're at it."

[TC disagreed] "Check out Santronics Software. It started life as the Wildcat BBS many years ago, and it can easily support dial-in, intranet, Internet, mail, news, and more, all in a relatively low power Windows box with a few standard internal dial-up modems. I would recommend hardware modems if you're going to try this route (which you'll need if you try Linux anyway) and personally, I wouldn't be scared to have four or five modems sharing a 128 Kbps connection. The way Internet data works, you won't likely have all five downloading files from the Internet at the same instant anyway, so they will likely share pretty well. For common tech files (drivers and utilities) you'll probably have them in the local file bases, which it can password protect. It also happens to have a Web server, so if your ISDN comes with a static real public IP address, you could even have it run your website. At 128 Kbps that wouldn't be a whole lot of bandwidth for outside surfers, but it may not be too bad either. It may be 'non typical' but I think it'd do the job for you."

[PH advised] "You will not get 56 Kbps speed at all. The 56 Kbps method only works when the upstream equipment is connected to the phone circuits via ISDN so that it can operate digitally on the high speed path. You cannot simply have one 56 Kbps modem dial to another 56 Kbps modem and get 56 Kbps; it does not work that way (they will operate in analog connected mode only).

You may wish to check out the following French language distributions:

• http://www.pingoo.org/
• http://www.mnis.fr/home/logiciel/SXLinux.html

I believe the SuSE distribution (from Germany) has French instructions and menus as a choice.

Which distribution you choose depends on whether you want to put moreemphasis on learning or put more emphasis on just doing. The distribution I use is Slackware, but that might not be right for you unless you are planning to learn a lot of details.

You can check out exhaustive lists at:

• http://www.distrowatch.com/summary.php
• http://old.lwn.net/Distributions/

If your ISP assigns you at least one static IP address over ISDN, and sets up DNS correctly, then you can support a mail server. I have encountered lead technical people at two ISPs who were convinced that anything less than DSL could not do static IP (absolutely and totally wrong), so be warned that ISPs might not set things up right or try to convince you that it cannot work. Nevertheless, you will soon want more bandwidth than ISDN. Look into getting a T-1 carrier.

Usually you use less computer than you would with Windows to do the same functions. Linux also supports other machine architectures such as Sun Sparc and PPC based machines, including Macintosh. You'll also want MySQL, Postgresql, or a similar database."

PW seconded an earlier recommendation of Wildcat Interactive Net Server:

"Wildcat Interactive Net Server is how we started the first ISP back in the day. Sure, it's cheap...but that's what you're going to be getting in return."

[CF echoed] "As long as we are talking about "old" BBS/Groupware, something many of us liked better than Wildcat is "MajorBBS/Worldgroup," still available (and improved) here."

—End