Edwin,

While Rand is correct in saying that the filter is there to
protect POTS from DSL, the rest of his response is incorrect.

Think of all your PNA home networking NICS (whether Diamond or
any other brand) as telephone devices that must be plugged into
the POTS via filtered outlets to isolate them from the DSL
signal. The PNA standard works on regular phone lines. Your
gateway machine communicates with the DSL modem via the standard
NIC and with your home network via the PNA (Diamond) NIC.

If your ICS (Internet Connection Software) is properly
configured, your PNA NICs will have the correct private network
IP addresses and everything should be okay. If you are using
Windows XP ICS I recommend that you do not use their firewall,
as it doesn't give much protection, and that you install the
ZoneAlarm firewall on your gateway instead. If you are using
Wingate  ICS or Winproxy ICS, their built-in firewalls are good
enough. You can always test your firewall with ShieldsUP, at
Gibson research's website, www.grc.com.

Also, as I discovered with the help of a poster on this list, if
you use the Windows XP ICS you should install a proxy server
too, such as AnalogX, which is free, in order to get more
reliable internet connections from your client machines.
(Wingate and Winproxy are proxy servers and don't require any
additional proxy servers.)

Good Luck.
Joab

At 12:34 AM 2/10/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Date:    Fri, 8 Feb 2002 17:10:48 -0700
>From:    "Rand M. Blunck" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Networking with Homefree "Diamond" Phoneline system.
>
>Edwin,
>
>I believe that it is the other way around, that is, that the
>filter is there
>to keep DSL from interfering with your POTS (plain old
>telephone system.)
>I'd recommend that you first try cabling the splitter side
>where the filter
>is to the new Home Network NIC, but before the filter.  Then
>connect any
>phones from the NIC output with the filter between the NIC and
>the phone.
>This will give your new NIC the same signal as the DSL modem,
>but without
>going through the modem.
>
>If that doesn't work correctly, place the filter back between
>the splitter
>and the Home Network NIC, which should not cause any
>interferance with your
>phone.
>
>(However, in our network, one of our 4 client boxes would not
>access the
>network until we put one of the DSL filters on the phone lines
>in that
>room - and we don't even have DSL!  We use Sprint Broadband
>which comes from
>an antenna through a cable modem and ethernet card.  The other
>3 work great
>without any additional attention.  But, this would indicate
>that the phone
>was indeed interfering with the network, which it is not
>supposed to do...)
>
>If neither of these options gives you a good result, you can
>check your
>phone line to see if you have more than one set of phone wires
>- most do
>anymore.  If so, you could set up a dual plug outlet in the
>rooms where you
>need to network and use the second phone line for the
>network.  I don't
>believe that you actually need a phone company signal for the
>computers to
>communicate using that copper wire.
>
>Again, good luck!
>Rand Blunck
>Why Not Try Computing
>Glendale, AZ
>
> >... My DSL modem is hooked to the phone line with a 2 outlet
> > splitter. The remaining socket on the splitter has a line
> filter connected
> > to it so that the regular phone service will not interfere
> with dsl. Do I
> > hook the cable from the Homefree card to this filtered side
> or do I not
>use
> > the filter. I certainly do not want to foul-up the dsl when
> I do this.
>
>------------------------------

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