I take an interest in Linux and Home firewalls etc. so follow the Smoothwall mailing list. The guy who runs Smoothwall - Richard Morrell - has to be one of the most arrogant and least tolerant people around but provides a great product and some entertainment.

Some guy just asked...

I am considering changing from modem to home highway (UK ISDN) because of the lack of ADSL out in the sticks where I live. They (BT) say that they now have a USB connection so a terminal server is not required. Can you tell me if smoothie can handle this - or if there are plans to support it.

A perfectly reasonable question you might think ? - Richard Morrel's response....

David do you read the website ???
I can't MAKE IT ANY CLEARER
Earth calling David ?

Both the question and answer intrigued me - so I went looking and couldn't find the answer anywhere. (HH USB has only been available since 1st Nov). I replied with...

I've just spent some time on both smoothwall.com and smoothwall.org and cant find reference to BTs USB HomeHighway which was launched 1/11/01. I may of course just be looking in the wrong place.
The closest I could find was http://www.smoothwall.co.uk/products/homeserver/spec.html but no specific mention of USB HomeHighway .
I did find the following in the GPL faq : "Courtesy never hurts, and sometimes helps"

Which was bounced by the list Moderator as "unacceptable" :rolleyes:

My point ;) - It makes you appreciate ScoobyNet and the help you get here with only a few flamings and rare deletions :)

Deano

The guy sounds like a tosser. IMHO ;)

Marc Andreesen used to be like that, until he got his fingers burnt by MS.

USB HH? Hmmm.

Have to go have a look at that, even though I've already got HH.

Chris, The latest HH NTEs have a USB port in the bottom.

Personally ;) I'd avoid it. BT do not have a great record with driver support for the BT branded products. Steve P (Kheldar)uses the USB port and his C/S ping is shocking. It can't all be sh*te ISP 'cos its never good even late at night. Far better to stick with a decent branded internal TA in a firewall....

Deano

At the end of the day if you're given a choice between Ethernet and USB, there's 30 years of experience in using Ethernet products.

USB for networking: not keen :(

Sure Richard can be a bit off the wall sometimes - it probably comes from getting the same numptie questions 10^7 times a week, when they ARE in the docs, or the answers are found with 10 seconds on google...

"My 3com 3c509 card doesn't get detected"
"How do I see my orange webserver from inside the green network"
"How do I edit a file?"
and, about the 2nd of every month
"My logs have all dissapeared"

are particular favourites....

With regard to the question ( if you are interested ... ) USB ISDN is not currently supported and probably won't be unless there are a lot of people asking for it. The USB access uses PPPoA via Alcatel's mgmt.o library, which 'aint compatible with ISDN. A generic ISDN TA can be purchased for peanuts anyway.

Off the list he's as polite and helpful as you would like - I have exchanged a few mails with him over the last 6 months on various topics. I think the root cause of the frustration is the amount of people expecting something for nothing. They are happy to use the product and ask the questions, but can't even be ar$ed to donate as little as a fiver to keep it going within GPL.

Cheers,
Steve

Steve

Yes, I am interested, hence why I went off to the web-sites to search. My Dad may be getting HH and I'd love to set him up with a smoothwall box to protect his couple of PCs. Is the info on the web-site ? 'cos I may be missing other info I'd like to know.

The concept of ISP branded smoothwall boxes (now being promted on www.smoothwall.com) maybe an attractive option at work aswell, hence I keep an eye on the list and have played with Smoothwall at home (I dont use it as GPL isnt quite flexible enough for me)

Fully appreciate the frustration of oft repeated questions (e.g. "When did Scoobynet start" in General ;)) and lack of donations but imho that response was uncalled for and has probably sent a potential donor running to the hills.

Its his and a great product but I dont think he always helps it with his public persona.

Deano

Deano,

Is there any particular reason you would opt for a USB T/A ? There are 1000's of installations working perfectly on normal ISDN T/A's, why make life any more difficult :) . Watch out for local windows clients kicking dial-on-demand into life doing dns requests btw, I have a couple of thousand [users] mails on file so I can dig the fix out if it is applicable.

My (non-gpl) Home Server is on order .. I'll let you know if there are any significant differences if you like - I'm getting it primarily for the re-written USB drivers and the configurable ad-blocking module.

SteveM

Steve

As I saifd above, I would avoid it for my own use beacuse I dont trust BT with that sort of thing :), I have an Eicon Diva in a SuSE box doing my F/W&Dial-up to ISP/Work quite happily. For my cheapskate (:)) Dad, it may be different.

I would be interested to know if Smoothwall can be configured to dial-out then accept dial-back connections. I have my current SuSE box doing this (to a Cisco Router in our test network) and would like to know if Smoothwall could. I did post this to the list some time ago but had no response.

We run several thoudsand Cisco ISDN Dial Ups with Firewall Feature set on 1603s. I wouldn't use anything else for large scale ISDN. However we have a much smaller project on the horizon where a small, potentially cheap, Ethernet based Appliance style firewall with DMZ might be useful - so I keep my eyes open :)

Deano

Andrew

Good point. I also have an external TA which I use with my Laptop for Corporate remote access (it needs a securid pin) separate from my home Internet setup or isolated test environment @ work.

Someone did suggest I put a webcam on the securid card, then OCR the pin when its needed for dial-in. so that it could be automated through Linux. I fear that may breach 1 or 2 security guidelines though...:)

Just one or two.. ;)

Have now received 2 replies from Richard himself

"Dont be a tw*t have a day off"

and

"Also you're not a paying customer so f**k the courtesy"

The asterisks are mine. They are the sole content of the 2 E-Mails :rolleyes:

Never likely to be a paying cutomer now am I ?

Deano

What's this? BT in poor support shocker?

Just intrigued for future customer installs.

I'll stick to my seperate ISDN router and firewall. :)

[Edited by ChrisB - 2/6/2002 10:57:45 PM]

FWIW I have HH with the USB port, useful for machines where you can't stick another PCI card in for a term adapter or in my case one PC connected using the USB and one has a term adapter. So if the guy wanted he can use a term adapter, you don't have to assuming whatever your using has drivers for the USB bit, but you can.

Oh if you want something more flexable in terms of licensing to build a firewall off of try FreeBSD or OpenBSD. BSD License lets you keep all your propriety changes private and I've run FreeBSD+IPFilter combo Firewall/NAT setups for quite a while, more stable than linux imho (Not that I'm after starting OS/License wars. I run WinXP/2k on my desktop, Linux and FreeBSD on my swervers)


Andrew


[Edited by Andrewza - 2/7/2002 12:07:32 AM]