On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 01:58:30PM +0300, croubekas@panafonet.gr wrote:

I am about to terminate my ISDN 64Kbps connection and get an ADSL 384 or maybe 512. The ADSL will have a static IP and I will be able to have a 24/7 connection up and running. In addition I will also make a web page and publish it (with apache).

You might want to consider using your ISP's web space rather than local space, for the following reasons: 1. Upload speed (the speed at which your machine will serve pages to the internet) is generally slower on ADSL. The ISP's machines will be well-connected. 2. Security - you don't need to worry about accepting incoming httpd connections if you use the ISP's space.

Currently my Linux PC which does all the internet-work is a P-II 350 with 256MB ram and 2x40GB drives. It is running SuSE7.2.

The ISP gave me a list of minimum requirements that the PC which will have the ADSL connection must meet. Among them he requests a P-III 450 as a minimum for the CPU. Is this necessary for Linux?? The minimum reqs supplied by the ISP are concerning a PC running Windows.

The ISP appears to believe that you need a sledgehammer to crack a nut. You might need a PIII-450 if you're running Windows, and you want to do all your web browsing and stuff on that machine. I have a 512k ADSL line, and my firewall/router is IPCop, running on a 486DX2/66 with 32 MB RAM and a 1 GB HDD. It's a bit pushed (I'm not running Squid or Snort), but it's coping OK.

Do you think that I should follow the ISP's minimum recommendation or will the machine that I am currently occupying suffice??

Depending on what you're using it for, it's probably fine. If you want it to work as a desktop, running KDE, OpenOffice, etc. along with handling the ADSL line, then you might find it a bit slow. Otherwise, it's massively over-powered for just routing, firewalling and webserving. If this is what it ends up doing, you might like to reduce the clock and/or bus speed to save power and prolong the life of the hardware - otherwise, it'll spend most of its life twiddling its thumbs... Of course, it depends on your ADSL hardware. If you buy a cheap USB ADSL modem, then it might require lots of CPU horsepower to replace the functions that the modem should be doing (like a winmodem). You'll also be at risk of getting a modem which has no Linux drivers. However, if you buy a nice external router, the CPU load should be minimal. HTH... -- David Smith Work Email: Dave.Smith@st.com STMicroelectronics Home Email: David.Smith@ds-electronics.co.uk Bristol, England GPG Key: 0xF13192F2