Mediaone cable modems

[mcmanus at AppliedTheory.com (mcmanus at AppliedTheory.com)]

I've been running m1 on a lan of 5 boxes for all of 4 days now, but
basically I'm pretty damn pleased..

basically one box needs two NICs and runs the linux IP masquerade
stuff.. (I'm running 2.1.x kernels, so i run IPchains).. that solves
99% of the 'outgoing' issues.. including special modules for stuff
like non-passive FTP and real audio and icmp..

ssh works fine..

incoming to anything other than the gateway machine is more
problematic.. though I think there are some port redirectors
available.

incoming to the gateway machine is good.. even though they use DHCP
they seem to try and minimize IP flap, only re-using one for a
different MAC address if the pool is empty of other choices.. so if
your machine is on most of the time it should succeed in renewing its
lease.. they even publish DNS records for you that follow your IP,
though there is obviously some lag here if you get renumbered.

Things I ran into in setting this up:
       * if you run a 2.1.x kernel you need a new dhcpcd (I got 1.3.6)
       and it takes different command line flags that required
       adjusting my redhat 5.2 ifup script

       * Ip-Chains are much easier than ifwadm stuff for doing network
         address translation.. but they're (I think) a 2.1.x thing
         only.. (thus the above comment)

	* IPX tunnels are really cool and work well.

:: Do they block TCP ports?

they block the SMB ones.. (137-139 I think?).. but that's all.. it's
just a security thing for some of their not-so-clueful windows folks.

:: Can you run servers?

with the above caveats

:: Their website, www.mediaoneexpress.com, is too 'dumbed down' to
:: be intelligible.

actually for all this being non-official they have a lot of
information available.. even providing two newsgroups
	     express.techtalk.lans and express.techtalk.linux
for these kinds of things and some starting points at
    http://www.ne.mediaone.net/customercare/helpdesk/fs_lans.html
and http://rlz.ne.mediaone.net/linux/

This is a lot more information than Timewarner ever offered when I was
in new york.. They did every thing they could to keep you from running
anything but Win95.. MediaOne is more like "we're selling bandwidth,
just don't call us about anything but Win95".. very reasonable.

-P
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