[techtalk] PPP == Arg!

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Mon, May 01, 2000 at 02:28:35AM +0000 or thereabouts, jenn at simegen.com wrote:
> Kristina Pfaff-Harris wrote:
> > 
> > Hi all. I have a tricky modem that used to work and now doesn't.  Oh, it
> > dials and connects and authenticates, but after ACKing the remote address,
> > it hangs up! I have looked through the PPP users mailing lists, the
> > Serial, Serial Programming, Modem, and PPP Howto's, and even the kernel
> > devel mailing lists to no avail.  Anyone have any idea why this might
> > happen?  All the fixes I've seen have to do with problems authorizing, and
> > that part is actually okay. ~sigh~ Any help gratefully accepted. :)
> 
> We get that sort of problem occasionally (we're still using
> modems-no-longer-acceptable-for-the-modem-pool-so-you-might-as-well-
> have-them-Dancer from our era as volunteer sysops for a community ISP).
> The reason they're no longer acceptable is usually that they've
> developed faults. Age, lightning strikes, assorted other hardware
> glitches...
> 
> Ninety percent of the time, power cycling the modem works for us.
> Sometimes you have to leave it off for a slow count of fifteen (clear
> ROMS? Dunno. It's 'magic' but it works).

I don't have the same set-up as Kristina or Jenn V, but power cycling 
is usually the solution to a good ninety per cent of our modem woes. 
(I don't know what 'diald' really does, but whenever I mention it, 
people wince.)

I also don't understand setting up PPP at all. But Kristina's description
looks exactly like that of a friend who has been getting into Linux
recently, and because I knew the answer to something once, he asks
me anything. Then he mails me the answer when he finds it out
himself. I like this arrangement :) Anyway, he went through all the 
available documentation, learned about medems, PPP, all manner of 
things. And still he would start PPP off, it would connect, and then 
things got flaky.

In the end, he tried getting one of the free ISP accounts that are
popping up in the UK now, tried connecting to that, and it all worked
perfectly. Turned out that (handwave) the original ISP was sending
something ever so slightly wrong back down the line. 

Is it possible to try that and see whether it's actually the ISP? :)

Telsa