August,
I've just gone through the same decision process myself. Here's what I've found.
The best place for checking out DSL providers and issues is dslreports.com
In my area the only DSL I can get is IDSL which is slower than regular DSL. But I live too far from the POP to get regular DSL. $69/mo. and I would buy a router from them at $500 or so. I was close to going with that because my first contact with the cable company said they're not in my area yet. But a sales person from AT&T cable called and they are now installing in this area, so I'm going with that instead at $49/mo. If I could get full speed DSL, that would have been best, but with the speed difference I'll try cable first.
The cable pipe is faster than IDSL by 4 or 5 times ( I don't remember the exact numbers ) but it is a shared pipe instead of the dedicated bandwidth you'd get with DSL. Cable is less secure than DSL, again because of the shared aspect. It's like being on a LAN with other local subscribers. If you leave Microsoft networking turned on on the cable connection, everyone in your neighborhood can connect to your PC.
Beyond that, security issues with dial-in, cable and DSL are similar, crackers using IP address scanners can find your PC and try to attack it. Fixed IP addresses with cable and DSL make you a sitting target, dial-up makes your PC a moving target. So any type of connection really should have a firewall of some type.
Dial-up users generally use a software firewall such as BlackIce or Zone Alarm. I have AtGuard, which was bought by Symantec and is sold under a different name now.
Some (maybe all?) DSL routers also provide firewall functionality as well as NAT. NAT is one way of sharing a single DSL or cable connection with multiple PCs.
Similar firewall/routers are now available for cable connections too, so you can get a firewall and multiple connections in one nice, neat, little box. Software firewall/NAT routers are also availble.
But I'm going to try something different. I have several old PCs in the basement and I like tinkering with this kind of stuff so I'm going to install two ethernet NICs in one of the old PCs and run OpenBSD on it to turn it into a firewall. Even though it's more trouble, I can learn something this way and be comfortable with the level of security I've got installed.
That's the plan anyway. <G> Right now, I'm waiting for the cable installer to show up. After this is all done I'll write about OpenBSD if anyone is interested. |
