“It took time and effort, but the decision was made and the cash
was laid! I’d heard rumors and horror stories surrounding the
difficulties of getting Linux boxes to communicate with the latest
development in Internet technology: the cable modem. Steadying my
nerve (and my pocketbook), however, I decided that it was time to
brave the storm, dodge the truth, and let the @home technicians
stare blankly at my Linux screen.”
“Let’s take a look at the environment. If your machine is a
stand-alone desktop, this section won’t be relevant to you. If you
have a small network at home, however, you’ll need to run two
network interface cards (NICs). If you had two NICs in one machine,
you would need to set up each device individually. The first
Ethernet adapter should be up and running already because it runs
your private/local network. The cable company will supply the
second NIC, which you will have to install and configure. (NOTE:
When you sign up for the service, make sure that you ask for a PCI
card—not ISA.) If you’re running one of the newer
distributions, this configuration will be a snap! With its new
kudzu application, Red Hat 6.1 makes the configuration of newer
hardware a breeze.”
“If your OS isn’t a newer release, you need to go into your
favorite network adapter setup tool (such as netcfg in Red Hat) and
add the new device. In Red Hat’s linuxconf, you can open the basic
host information section, go to the adapter 2 tab, and enter the
proper information. In Caldera’s Open Linux, there are similar
tools that allow for multiple device setups (like Ethernet
Interface Configuration, which is found in the COAS toolbox).”