tinyjo | (no subject)

I think that when they train gym instructors, they must really drill into them that they should be encouraging. About every 5 minutes in combat class, Marlon says "Good work". It's like a reflex. Cerys (?) says "That's great, guys" and "Great stuff, guys" but that's the only difference. I think that I'm getting on OK at the gym - I've been every day this week - although my abs are completely knackered after the synergise (yoga type stuff) class I did on Wednesday. And apart from my lapse on Monday, I've been pretty good on the food side of things too. Unfortunately for me, my body is very stubborn about shedding weight so I may not see the benefit for a while.

I find myself hoping that the weather doesn't get any warmer this weekend. At Comics 2002, it was boiling hot which made the venue murder to be in - stuffy and uncomfortable with nowhere to sit down. Hopefully having slightly cooler weather and the Reckless Engineer actually open (a pub down the road) will make for a much more enjoyable convention. Metcheck suggests it won't be getting much warmer and also that by the end of next week things will be sunny again so I can have a (someone else's) birthday barbeque - yay! I love playing with fire :)

I've been thinking about getting ADSL for a while, but something else has just occurred to me. If I get ADSL, can I get a fixed IP address? If I could, I could host my own websites, potentially. It's not like I get enough visitors that bandwidth would be a huge issue, I don't think. It might cost slightly more, I suppose, but on the other hand, I wouldn't have to pay my hosting company. What do you think?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Many ISPs give static IP addresses now, often for free. For example, I'm with Zen Internet. Not only do I have a static IP for my NAT router, but I also have 5 static IPs for other machines on my network. I am therefore able to host my own servers, eg http://www.greenpartywatford.org.uk/

I've just been and looked at their site (http://www.zenadsl.com/Default.asp?headlineid=2404) - so are the only costs the £23 monthly charge and a one of £50 for the modem and filters - and then I just plug it all in, no engineers or anything?

And is my regular voice phone completely separate to that, ie. I pay BT my line rental and call charges to OneTel? (ideally I would like to be rid of BT altogether but NTL/Telewest but I can't get cable at my address...)

(...I've been thinking of switching to broadband myself you see...)

Yep, just the cost of modem and filter, plus broadband ISP cost. Just plug the filter into your phone socket after they activate your line (took about 5 days for me). No engineers required. This is called a "wires only" install.

You'll then be billed by BT for normal telephone line rental, your broadband ISP for broadband service, and then by One.Tel if you use them to make calls. This is actually exactly the situation I'm in. ZenADSL for my broadband ISP, BT for the line, and One.Tel for call charges.

I've been looking at their site, and they look pretty good. Have you had any problems with them? Would you recommend them?

Also, if I'm serving my own sites, I presume that I'll need to set up my own firewall and so on. And recommendations on good products for that?

I recommend Zen very highly. Also I now know someone who works there, so I can always shout at him if things go wrong :-)

I have their business 2mbps service since I use it for working from home every day. I think I've had the link go down twice in four months, and then only for five minutes or so. Probably BT's fault anyway, since the entire ADSL signal vanished from the line.

I'm using XP Pro's own built in firewall which seems quite adequate - I had a friendly security tech do some port scans for me to check for vulnerabilities. Also, if you buy something like a Draytek Vigor 2200 or 2600 as your adsl modem/router/firewall/wireless access point, then that has an additional firewall built in as well, plus lots of other port redirection goodies so you can hide behind NAT if you want.

Hm. You should in theory be able to get a fixed IP addy -- certainly in the US this was one of the services offered -- but I haven't checked whether NTL also offer it. I also hadn't thought that this would mean the possibility of hosting my own site myself. Double hmm.

Keep me posted on what happens with this?

NTL certainly don't give fixed IP addresses for the normal commercial thing, though they don't change much so you could use something like dyndns if you wanted to run servers.
One of my colleagues has a deal where you get TWO static IP addresses, which is good for playing with things, for the price of one. I can find out who if anyone is interested.

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