ADSL cards?
Lawrence D'Oliveiro
apparently only does symmetric NAT, which is no good for SIP telephony.
I could get a newer ADSL router--any suggestions? Another option might be an
ADSL card to put into one of my Linux boxes--anybody successfully used one
of those in NZ?
Thanks for any ideas.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> Another option might be an ADSL card ...
Or an external USB modem. I see Dick Smith has two models listed, the XH1172
and the XH9972, of similar price (under $40) and both "reduced to clear".
The specs for the former mentions a Conexant chipset, while the latter
mentions "Centragate". Searching my Linux kernel sources turns up several
entries for Conexant in the "cxacru" driver, but not for Centragate.
Howveer, Googling for Centragate, the first hit is at--the Conexant site!
EMB
I'd look at XH1173 - it's an router but supports both full and half
bridge modes. Using it in bridge mode will accomplish a NAT-free
connection without needing any strange USB drivers.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> I'd look at XH1173 - it's an router but supports both full and half
> bridge modes. Using it in bridge mode will accomplish a NAT-free
> connection without needing any strange USB drivers.
Hey, thanks for that tip. Similar price, too. I might go tomorrow and see if
the clearance stock has disappeared yet.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> I'd look at XH1173 - it's an router but supports both full and half
> bridge modes. Using it in bridge mode will accomplish a NAT-free
> connection without needing any strange USB drivers.
Hmm, that would require a machine with 2 Ethernet ports, I think. I'm pretty
sure I can alias 2 completely different IP addresses to one port, but I
can't see any way to prevent some other machine in my office from
accidentally capturing the external IP address being served up by the
half-bridge DHCP server.
EMB
> In message <4719b673$1...@news01.wxnz.net>, EMB wrote:
>
>> I'd look at XH1173 - it's an router but supports both full and half
>> bridge modes. Using it in bridge mode will accomplish a NAT-free
>> connection without needing any strange USB drivers.
>
> Hmm, that would require a machine with 2 Ethernet ports, I think.
It will. Not exactly expensive or rocket science to add a second
ethernet port though.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro
True ... if it weren't for the fact that my Linux boxes are Shuttles. One's
got a free PCI-E x1 slot, the other has a spare PCI slot, but that's
already spoken for.
Actually the boxes do have a second network connection available--namely,
the FireWire ports. But that seems like a fiddly way to do it.
I think I'll be giving the USB modem a try.
Robert Cooze
there are no problems. The fire wall does all the work
--
http://cooze.co.nz home of the RecyclerMan aka Robert Cooze
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> I think I'll be giving the USB modem a try.
Well, I got the last XH1172 from the local Dick Smith Powerhouse today. The
box had already been opened, with a sticker on it saying "NOT NEW --
IMPERFECT MERCHANDISE -- FULLY SERVICED WITH FULL WARRANTY" and
under "REASON" was written "Customer did not install properly". Ah well,
never mind.
Got it home, had a hunt through the CD for various Windows .exe files, and
tried running the firmware extraction utility from
accessrunner.sourceforge.net on them. No joy. Had another look, found a
file called CNXE2FW.BIN. First few bytes looked like the signature the
Firmware extraction utility was looking for--bingo! After a bit of
experimenting and looking over the cxacru.c module in the kernel source,
figured out it had to be copied to my system under the
name /lib/firmware/cxacru-fw.bin. Did so. Plugged in the modem, saw the
usual new-USB-device messages, then
cxacru_atm_start: CHIP_ADSL_LINE_START returned -104
ATM dev 0: poll status: error -104
Sigh. Checked around a bit, found some driver RPMs on the CD for Red Hat 9.0
and Mandrake 9.2 (yeah, pretty ancient). Unpacked the Red Hat RPM, found
another firmware file in it, slightly different from the Windows one. Tried
copying that, then unplugging and replugging the modem. This time I got
error code -110.
Did a bit more Googling, checking the SourceForge AccessRunner mailing list
archive, and came across mentions of firmware problems, and a link to
another version of the firmware available from a guy named Joerg Mertin
<https://stargate.solsys.org/mod.php?mod=download&op=view&download_id=33>.
Oddly, that one was only about 600K in size, versus 2.5MB for the other
versions. Never mind. Downloaded it, tried it--this time I was getting
messsages like this:
ADSL line: down
ADSL line: attempting to activate
ADSL line: down
ADSL line: attempting to activate
Success! At last, a working version of the firmware. Why didn't the other
ones work? Who knows.
That was the physical connection taken care of, next I needed something to
do PPP-over-ATM. Found that the standard Gentoo ppp package includes this
as an option. First I had to rebuild my kernel to enable CONFIG_PPPOATM and
a few other options, which I'd neglected to do in my last kernel upgrade
(yesterday). That was OK. Then figure out the right configuration for pppd
to bring up the link--the included documentation was singularly unhelpful
on this point, apart from indicating that I had to load the "pppoatm"
plugin module.
After a bit more Googling, I found this <http://www.lemoncube.com/19.html>,
which explained that I had to put "0.100" (a "device name" made up from the
VPI and VCI settings, obviously) after the plugin name. Tried it--success!
The link came up, and I am now back online through the USB modem.
Of course, the rest of my office machines can't access the Internet just
yet. I think I'll move the USB modem to my other box, running OpenSuSE 10.2
(I just checked, and the SuSE folks were thoughtful enough to include all
the right options in their kernel already), then figure out the right
iptables commands to enable NAT through that.
Then, at some point, I'll get back to what I was originally trying to do,
which prompted all this messing around--which was make a simple SIP
connection to ekiga.net...
dilberts_left_nut
You should install windows, then you won't have to do all that fucking
about just to use a USB modem.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> You should install windows, then you won't have to do all that fucking
> about just to use a USB modem.
I've got it working now, with the machine acting as a router letting my
other boxes access the Internet via NAT. I've started experimenting with
firewalling capabilities, including tarpitting incoming password-guessing
attacks (more fun than blocking them). It's also taken over DHCP service,
with fixed address assignments for my own machines, and allowing
for "guest" machines, not part of my regular network (like this strawberry
G3 iMac I have on loan from a client), to have access to my LAN but not the
Internet.
Now, how would you achieve all this with your non-"fucking about" Dimdows
installation, again?
dilberts_left_nut
My router does this too (plus samba, ftp, ssh & vpn) but my point is,
why bother, buy a modem with ethernet and then spend those "fucking
about" hours doing something useful with your life.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> why bother, buy a modem with ethernet ...
I already had one, but it didn't do the things I needed to do. Which you
might have understood if you'd actually read the thread.
dilberts_left_nut
...but you cut it all off.
sam
Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> Which you might have understood if you'd actually read the thread.
>
> ...but you cut it all off.
Previous postings are there for a reason.
dilberts_left_nut
Fair enough then.
But the post I replied to was just tooo big a target :)
sam
I think we probably have enough flamers, thanks for your audition.