Cable modems represent a good value, and a growing number of people are dumping their modems for the vastly superior performance of a so-called cable modem. But @Home, the major provider of most cable services in Canada and the U.S., officially only supports Windows and Macintosh clients. The question is: can it be used with Linux? The short answer is "probably...."
Goodbye, support
According to the FAQ at http://www.home.com/qa.html#TCP/IP stack, @Home currently supports only Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0, and MacOS 7.6.1 with Open Transport v. 1.1 or greater TCP/IP stacks.
Thus, Linux is not "officially" supported.
However, a little rooting around on Usenet will provide you with the info you need to get it all working. Basically, you'll have the best luck if you use a supported network card, such as the 3COM 3C509 ISA card, which most Linux distributions provide support for. Then, you'll need to take the DNS settings from the @home workorder and drop them into the appropriate locations in the Linux network config dialogs. Consult your Linux documentation for details on how to do this.
If you keep getting "DHCP...failed" messages, you might have to to download the latest dhcpcd for your release -- obviously, on another system that does have Internet access -- and then figure out how to get it over to Linux. (For example, you might use the disk mounter that comes with BootX.) Then, install and configure it.
E.g., from a command line outside of the X Windows environment:
Another possibility is the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach: If @Home or any other software service doesn't support Linux directly, emulate a machine it does support. Running the Basilisk II Mac emulator for Linux, this allows you to use a documented configuration technique similar or identical to the one that would be used on a Macintosh. Thus, you'd install it under the Mac OS (on a Linux box running the Basilisk II Mac emulator) and then, if you wish, copy the settings down and duplicate them in the Linux environment. At the very least, you should be able to run it under Basilisk II, which runs System 7.6.1 very nicely. Of course, you still need to configure your Linux environment with a network card and TCPIP services. (This trick also works on the PC version of Basilisk, by the way.)
If you need static IP addresses or the ability to install and maintain a web server, the @Home service isn't appropriate. However, the company offers a business service that provides these services. See the FAQ at http://work.home.net/support/hints-winnttcp.html for details.
ADSL also supports Linux using similar techniques.
For further reading:
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