RE: [TCLUG:9401] Cisco 675 questions

[Smith Jeremy <jrsmit2@uswest.com>]

First of all, the most important distinction to make is that what you are
allowed to do on your end is determined by your contract with the ISP, in
your case, I guess, USWEST.net.  U S WEST communications could care less how
many IP's you have in your house, or how they're configured.

If USWEST.net is now sending their 675's in a DHCP/NAT configuration (which
works as of the latest CBOS release), it's certainly possible to just hook
up a hub (_without_ the crossover) and connect five or six computers to it.
NAT is "Network Address Translation" and serves fundamentally the same
purpose as IP Masquerading.  You lose, of course, if you want to provide
external services via this configuration, because none of your boxes other
than the Cisco router have a "real" IP address.

USWEST.net doesn't configure the 675's differently by region; however, there
have been at least two different configurations offered over time.
Originally the 675's were set in bridging mode, using DHCP, and you could
just requested as many IP addresses as you wanted.  Now they're set in PPP
mode; I'm surprised to hear they're using NAT, but I support it makes sense.

Jer