use Perl

Earlier this month, Verizon informed me that the static IP address associated with my DSL line was going away in early Feburary. This bummed me out, since there are a number of servers that I use that depend on a static IP, not the least of which was sendmail's relaying rules up at ol' Aliens, Aliens, Aliens. To keep that static IP, my DSL fee would double. That option was ruled out early. Recently, Comcast rewired my building to support cable modem access. I decided to give the cable modem service from Comcast a try and upgrade my venerable analog cable to the fancy-dan digital cable system.

The installation went more or less smoothly today and I write this through my cable modem connection. I will be dumping all my Verizon services, which will save me $50/month.

Yea me!

Some quick notes for those using Verizon DSL. Verizon requires your machine to make a PPPoE connection. The Linksys BEFSR41 can do this handily. Comcast's cable modem simply uses DHCP, presumably because you need to inform them of the modem's MAC address. Why Verizon DSL can't use a similiar method is a bit beyond me.