Comcast setup & cable modem fees

[nmeyers at javalinux.net]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 01:12:50PM -0500, Doug wrote:
> Hello:
> 
> I am moving to a condo in Acton, trying to sort through the options
> for phone, Internet, and TV connections.  Looks like Verizon doesn't
> have a switch close enough, so we have no DSL or fiber.  Speakeasy
> said they could do ADSL at the location which I thought odd since I
> thought they had to work with Verizon.
> 
> Comcast wants to do it all for $99/month.  I was clicking through
> their online order page, and they had two fees I had questions about. 
> The first was a cable modem for $99.  Is that a good deal, bad deal,
> or what?  The second was a software installation fee of $150 for 2-5
> computers.  Right now I have DSL from Verizon with a router box that
> does DHCP.  All the computers in the house have no trouble connecting
> to it.  In an ideal world, a cable Internet connection would also be a
> DHCP server, and no software needs to be installed.  Can this software
> install be avoided?  Just trying to avoid $250 worth of initial fees.

I would guess they're selling you Windows software to share the
connection. I think you only get one IP address (that's all I use,
anyway), and the software runs on whichever host is physically connected
to the cable modem. The Linux equivalent of that is to configure that
host for IP forwarding and use iptables on that host to configure network
address translation for the other hosts in your house - and it doesn't
cost a dime :-).

Nathan