T1 planning

My blog is probably going to be pretty technogeekish for the next little while, as the hopefully imminent T1 is going to occupy my attention.

I ran a network cable from the location where the Cisco router will be, to the hole leading up to the Linksys router. I can't fit the end of the cable up through the hole yet so that will have to wait until I can unwire the Wildblue cable. This is unfortunate; I'd rather have both hooked up at the same time. But I should be able to confirm everything is working on the T1 from downstairs, so I can unwire one and wire the other, and could switch back if necessary. Having both hooked up at once is not worth drilling more holes.

I need to stop at my office and pick up a few things: some brackets to mount the Cisco router, and an RJ45-to-serial cable, which I'll need to configure the router. The Fairpoint guy might be bringing the latter, but better to have one in case he doesn't. I'll also make sure my laptop is ready to be a serial client.

Once he's here, we'll hook the T1 to the router's CSU/DSU and he will configure the router. We can use my laptop (or my Eee) via a network cable to confirm all is working. Once that's done, I will unwire Wildblue and wire the Linksys through, and confirm that it's getting DHCP and working, or if not, change its configuration. That should get us to where all our outbound communications are working.

After that, I have to look at inbound. We have a few inbound things, but none are high priority. I'll get HomeSeer set up and move it to port 80, having to update my bookmarks accordingly. I also have port forwarding to let me get to my Unix system from outside on port 22, and a few other forwarding things set up for file transfers and torrents which I'll want to update. Those have to be set up on the new router to match how they're set on the old router.

I'll also need to force DynDNS to update itself, which it should do automatically, so my tricklebrook.dyndns.org entry points to the right place.

After that, we'll have everything working as it does now, just far faster. Some things to consider later:

• What kind of file transfers will I want to start doing?
  
• Will I want to look into webcams or VoIP?
  
• In MUDs I play I might consider getting into combat.
  
• I wonder how SecondLife will work from here.
  
• Do I want to change settings on programs that are currently set to minimal-bandwidth but could be better configured?
  
• Do I have any interest in PS3 gaming online?
  
• What other Internet applications are there I have always avoided that I should reconsider?