[ILUG] DHCP on home LAN?

[Timothy Murphy]

On Monday 08 November 2004 22:29, Conall O'Brien wrote:

> Let's try to clarify my statement. A net install on a network with a 100
> MBit link to ftp.heanet.ie (I'd estimate about 30 min for a fully
> working KDE session), when *not* on a FC release day/week (let's give a few
>  days for the traffic spike to drop), will *always* be faster than
> downloading, burning, booting, and installing a CD iso set of 3 or more CDs
> (over 1 hour, maybe even 90 min to get a working KDE session, I'd guess).

I don't see the relevance of this,
since <1% of ILUG members have such a link.
You might as well say that a tortoise is faster than a hare
if it happens to be sitting in a jet.

> Now, to get back onto topic, DHCP is good. Especially for a laptop which
> moves between a few DHCP enabled locations. Then all that has to be
> changed location to location are the proxies...

In my case I seem to have to set the nameservers explicitly at both locations.

> I bet at the moment you have to reconigure between a static IP for home
> and DHCP in TCD every time you move your laptop between the two. Why
> spend that time reconfiguring youur laptop when you can just be given
> your settings for each network? iirc you have a wireless only lan.
> Perhaps your wireless AP can even do DHCP for you...

In practice there is not too much difference,
since I just run a little script in either case.
However, I agree that DHCP seems a little neater on my home WiFi LAN.
The only problem to date is that dhcpd has died once on my desktop,
I don't know why.

I don't incidentally have a wireless AP at home;
I have an Avaya PCI wireless (802.11b) card in my desktop,
which seems to work very well,
in fact better than the wireless APs in college.

Both Linux and Windows seem to me surprisingly bad
at helping one set up a WiFi network.

Under Windows-2000 - this is a Windows mailing list, isn't it? -
I have a Wireless icon in my Control Panel,
but when I click on it I am told it cannot find a wireless card,
even when WiFi is running.

Under Linux (Fedora-2), system-config-network
(or System Settings=>Network)
takes you into a more or less unintelligible maze
of Profiles and Devices.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland