Network

Motivation

This one was interesting to think about but easy to implement. I pretty much had two real options here: wireless and wired. If I were going for the true user experience, I would pick wireless. If I were going for the most inexpensive setup, I would pick wired.

Setup

I went with the wired solution because of the low cost and ease of setup (plug in cord). I already had a spare Linksys BEFR41 router/fw which wasn't being used. The router has served me well in the past, so there was no reason not to use it. While wireless solutions in Linux are certainly available, it would take money and more time to get them to work. I did some preliminary research (cause I like a challenge) and then realized that she might not even like using a pc at all, so I scrapped the idea. If I hear the I would sure love to use the computer on the couch kind of statements, I will reconsider the decision.

The other piece to solve was the broadband side of things. Should she get DSL or a cable modem? I set her up with SBC DSL because it was low-cost ($15/month), reliable and convenient (I had a spare DSL modem that wasn't being used). There was no Linux setup necessary to keep the connection active because the router does that by itself.

The machine has a pcmcia network card (eth0) which is plugged into a router which is connected to the DSL modem. The OS obtains its ip address via DHCP.. nothing fancy-- clean and simple.