Technocrat's Weblog

Fri, 28 Jan 2005

Want your own domain?

Learn from my 6 weeks of stress. Make it easy on yourself!

There are some useful references for this on the net. However, they are mainly geared towards the USA. Up here in Canada things are a little different. First, our choices in broadband ISP are much less than our southern neighbours. I've tried to make the points generally OS non specific. I use Linux so I can't speak for other OSs.

Step 1: Finding as ISP

You need to find an ISP that will give you a static IP address. That means that everytime you connect to the internet you are assigned the same IP address. Without this, you cannot have a domain. I use Wiznet. There tech support leaves alot to be desired but chooses are slim. So far I have not had to much trouble. In general you should ask the ISP these questions:

Step 2: Cable or DSL?

There's a great propaganda war going on here. Each side wants you to believe that the other service is evil.

While cable is generally faster, DSL speed can vary based on how far you are from the central switch. In my case the range is extreme. Note that, unless you do alot of downloading even the DSL speed that I have would be more than adequate for you. Speed aside, DSL is much more dependable. I have never heard of a DSL connection failing but people I know who use @home cable connections are regularly lamenting over downtime.

UPDATE (08/06/01) The first few months of DSL were good for me. Now I have a day or so of downtime spread out though the month. Wiznet does not own the line; Bell Canada does. Both myself and Wiznet talk to Bell about the outages. Bell claim that they will run some tests on my line. However, Bell never share with me the results of the tests and my service never improves. Given Bell's long history preditory practices against competing ISPs I'm sure they are not working especially hard to fix the problem. Bell's favourite excuse is to blame my modem. Cycling the power on the modem has no effect on getting back my line sync. Explain to me how it can be the modems fault?

Bell Canada: Either take responsibility and fix my problem or allow other companies to have their own lines

UPDATE (08/21/01) Success! After much complaining Bell Canada has fixed my connection. They came two weeks ago. They changed two things:

  1. The technician came to my house and did some testing. He exchanged my modem with one from his truck. It didn't work. He left me the modem claiming that it must by my wiring. He left but I was unconvinced. My line sync did not come back after 45 minutes of waiting. I went out to check the NID. Wouldn't you know it the "technician" broke the connection from my modem to the NID. I reconnected the wires everything was fine.
  2. Bell Canada may or may not have made ajustments at their end. I say this because a phone technician I know once told me that they can clean your phone line by removing load coils and bridge taps. These tend to load down the DSL signal and cause it to run slow. In cases where one is on the "fringe" of service, it can make a big difference in service.
Whether is was the modem or Bell I'll never know. Yes, I was pretty stubborn in saying that it was not my modem. I'll admit it looks like I might have been wrong. I do know that since that time I've had virutally no downtime.

As you can see, there are problems with both types of high speed connections. Talk to people in your area. What do they use? Are they satisfied?

Step 3: Registering your domain

There are many domain registrars. I use EasyDNS. I've had no problems so far. Be aware that many registrars expect to sell a hosting service to you aswell. When you talk to them make it clear that you have your own server and only want to pay for registering your domain name. As with all things, shop around. Compair prices. Ask others about their experiences.

Step 4: Installing your Service

You have two options: pay for installation or self install. Self install can save you some money. Besides, DSL install is easy when you know what to do:

  1. Buy or Rent your DSL modem? Renting is around $10(cdn) a month. I bought mine for about $300(cdn) on Ebay. I expect that the technology of existing modems will last for a few years yet so purchasing your modem should save you some money in the long run. Check with your ISP about what type of modem they use. Mine uses an Alcatel Speed Touch Home. Other manufacturers are 3com, GVC, CISCO, and Dlink. In theory, all these modems are compatible. However, your ISP may not be able to help you setup a modem that they have not provided for you.
  2. Once you have a modem and, your Telephone company has turned on your DSL, you can plug it into any phone jack. After about a minute the "sync" light should turn on. This tells you that your DSL line is on and working. However, you will have alot of feed back if you pick up your phone. To prevent this you need Line Filters. A line filter is attached to your phone jack between the wall jack and each phone in your house. It filters out the noise from the DSL line. My IPS could not tell me where to get them. I talked to Bell Canada and they told me to go to my local Bell World. The local one gave me a blank look. I went to a much larger store and they gave me 3 (I have 2 phones and I wanted a spare) at no charge.
  3. Your computer will need a network card. I will not go into details about this except that in the case of the Alcatel modem the IP address for the card had to be in the 10.0.0.0 range. Once that is configure you can connect to your modem via its internal web page. For the Alcatel modem you simply open you browser and enter the address http://10.0.0.138. From there you have to configure the modem so that is works with your ISP.
  4. Configuring the modem was the most difficult part form me. Not because it requires any skill but rather my ISP did not know how. No one I talked to knew that the fatory settings were not the same as the settings in the modem that they normally provided. These are called the VPI and VCI settings. They enable the modem to connect to the other end (I don't know the magic involved). In the case of the Alcatel modem I opened its website. Select the Phonebook menu item. You will see a table of entires. Go to the bottom where you see the caption "Use input fields below to add new entry". This is a screen shot from my modem. The yellow field named Neil shows the VPI and VCI settings needed for my ISP. You will have to ask you ISP what your settings should be.
  5. Once that is done, all you have to do is install and configure the software provided by your ISP. In my case it is PPPOE software. Your ISP should be able to help you with this.

Step 5: Security

At this point you should be able to connect and disconnect from your ISP at will. To run a domain though, you must have the connection running all the time. If you do not, people cannot see your web page and you will not receive all your email. Before you can be on all the time you need to setup security. In my case I used Bastille Linux to harden my system and protect it from inturders. It is your duty and responisblity to protect your system and the internet from Crackers. Not only will it prevent the loss of your own data but it will prevent Crackers from using your machine to attack someone else's computer in a Denial of Service Attack.

Step 6: Services

At this point you are ready to setup at the very least your web server and mail transfer agent. This will enable you to host your own web site and control your own email. For me, email was the most exciting. Never again will I have to change my email address. Afterall, I own it.

An important note about email and how you can protect yourself from spam. Never give out your true email addess to any site or news group or mailing list on the web. Use a mail alias. A mail alias is false name that your mail transfer agent knows to send to your actual email address. When you give out you address on the web it can be collected and used by spammers. If you give out an alias and begin to see spam comming to it you can simply delete the alias and not have to change your email address.

Finally, you'll want a web server to host your webpage. I use Apache as my web server. There are others but I think Apache is the best. If you are considering using a Micosoft web server, be warned, there are many security issues with MS products. Yes all OSs and applications have vulnerabilities but, Microsoft has more than average. Insecure.org has an excellent list of security exploits for all OSs.

Well that's the end for now. I hope I've helped you. If you have any questions or find any errors just Email me.