I thought that I would just ask for some general feedback on how companies are accessing fibre optic broadband.
My dilemma is with the issue that fibre optic broadband in this country seems to require you to use a BT modem which supports VDSl for BT Infinity and then you need to either connect a router such as the BT Business Hub to connect to the modem or the other option is that you can connect a computer and configure the one network card to use PPPOE.

I suspect most companies don't set up a computer with a network card using PPPOE because most companies use a dedicated firewall which probably cannot configure a network port as a PPPOE connection, so I must assume that the scenario in most companies is this setup:

Internet - BT Modem - BT router (with own firewall) - Then the companies real firewall and then the LAN

which means that if you want to setup remote access, you have to setup the Internet router (BT business router in this example) to "forward" the traffic to your companies real firewall and then your companies real firewall needs to forward that onto the remote access server. I put "forward" in inverted commas as I realise that firewall is not actually "forwarding" the traffic as its not preforming NAT functions.

I was thinking of getting a Draytek 2850 integrated modem and router and completely bypass the BT Modem and the BT Router (less products chewing electricity and that can go wrong). However, it seems kind of silly to have a presumably good firewall on the Draytek and then still have my Linux box acting as the proper firewall - there will be no DMZ, so it would really be just duplication.

So if I can figure out how to configure Slackware Linux to setup the network card as a PPPOE connection on the Internet side, I probably will go ahead with that as the Draytek would effectively be duplicating everything that my slackware box is going to do.

But I was just wondering how other companies handle the issue of a standard firewall box not really having WAN capability and all the WAN capable devices come with their own blasted firewall, which just makes everything duplicated for no good purpose as there is no DMZ. I am looking at the whole issue from the point of view of providing remote access from outside into the LAN as the idea is to enable workers to access the Server from home so as to access their data without having to come in. This would be done via a secure VPN. But having a firewall on the broadband router and another firewall on the slackware box would make it very difficult to troubleshoot. So how do other companies handle connecting to ADSL or fibre optic. do you guys use broadband routers like Draytek or whichever manufacturer and do you only have your firewall on your "broadband router" or do you do something similar to what I am looking to do? Thanks

Hope that everyone had a great Xmas. Went way too fast for me sadly ! Oh well, New years is still to come!