DSL Service

[AndyM]

We just got DSL offered to us by our local phone company.

We're paying $89.95 a month (plus tax) for our local phone service (with caller id, call waiting, and all the other bells and whistles I'll never use), unlimited long distance, and DSL service. It's the same price we were paying before for our local service + cell phone for long distance (everything we call is long distance from here!) + our dial-up ISP.

I don't know anything about it, but there's a pretty good increase in speed on certain things. Some things are the same as when we had dialup.

My question is, do I need to do anything special in terms of security? I've got the anti-virus software installed, but does anything work differently with DSL that I need to know, before someone hacks into my computer?

 

[Boxman]

These guys have more info than anyone reasonably needs: Broadband Reports

boxman

 

[thcri]

Andy,

We have had DSL now for about 3 years here at work. Security has always been a big issue. Most routers that you get with your DSL setup will have some security with it but don't totally rely on it. We at one time had Microsoft Proxy on our server but that has been around so long we felt it was easy to target. About a year ago and I did this also on our home computer was I just took an old computer and put Linux on it and used it as a proxy server. From what I was told is since it hasn't been around as long it is tougher to hack. If you plan on just hooking one computer up to your DSL router I would make sure you have at least windows 2000 or XP. Make sure you don't have any drives or directory's shared and you Windows is up to date. At home I even try not to have any critical files on it.

murph

 

[BILL_K]

Please get and install a hardware router/firewall such as the Linksys
BESFR41 AND intsall a software firewall such as Zone Alarm or my choice Tiny personal firewall.
Aslo go to Steve Gibson's page at www.grc.com and read what he has to say.
A good anti virus in also a must have-I use and recommend
AVG anti virus.
Billk
www.bkconnected.net

 

[AndyM]

Thanks all, for the suggestions.

I already use AVG as my anti-virus software. Why? Because it's free. I've never heard anything bad about it, but I think people trust the bigger brands more (Norton, McAfee).