Dial-out router mode not working

[phillipsjk256]

Hello,

I still have not retired my freesco router. I recently got dial-up Internet access to try to figure out why my e-mail doesn't work (I no longer trust my ISP).

Anyway, when I boot in dial-up router mode on a test machine, nothing happens. If I login as "up" I get the following message: "Command 'up' has just been sent" .... and nothing happens.
After reading about the modem intialization bug in 0.4.x, I went back and added an initialization string for modem0 (with the same results). During boot, no network cards were detected. Would that prevent dial-out?

I was able to successfully dial-out under Win98 (with the same machine). Knoppix failed PPP negotiation for some reason. A "NO CARRIER" response occured several times, so the line may be noisy (freesco does not even make the modem go off-hook). The modem is external.

Instead of switching to dial-up mode, I would prefer to leave the router in ethernet mode and have the modem link become the default route when in use. Is there an easy way to do that?

I had to change my user name for my ISP link. I failed to select my ISP as expected in menu 81. With no ISP selected, option 811 "Edit selected ISP" prompts you with option 822 "Define new ISP", which gives you an error message when you type in an existing ISP. I was under the impression the 'default' ISP would be selected automatically. I was able to edit things after accidentally typing the ISP name (selecting an ISP according to the computer).

[Lightning]

It has been a bit to far back for me to remember exactly what options are in 0.3.7

But there are some problems with your configuration. If you make your primary configuration a dialup router. Then Network 0 must be your internal network and not a public network range.

# [Network 0]
SDHCP=n #627 DHCP client
DHCPDNS=y #628 DNS via DHCP
INTNAME0=eth0 #620 Interface
IPADDR0=208.99.137.71 #621 IP address
NETMASK0=255.255.255.128 #622 Netmask
NETWORK0=208.99.137.0 #623 Network address
BRDCAST0=208.99.137.127 #624 Broadcast address
IPRANGE0="" #625 DHCP server dynamic IP range

In the 04x series the D-Link network card will require the tulip.gz network card driver installed as it will also in the 03x series from the 'new' directory of the modules for 037.

As for the modem, was it auto detected on cua0 or did you pick that port?
What brand of modem is it?

If this is a test machine or a new install, I would highly recommend running 0.4.4 over older versions of FREESCO and maybe even trying out the CD version which has all of the network drivers installed by default.

[phillipsjk256]

It has been a bit to far back for me to remember exactly what options are in 0.3.7

But there are some problems with your configuration. If you make your primary configuration a dialup router. Then Network 0 must be your internal network and not a public network range.

Network 0 is a public-facing interface (to my ASDL modem). I can not give it a private IP range.

In the 04x series the D-Link network card will require the tulip.gz network card driver installed as it will also in the 03x series from the 'new' directory of the modules for 037.

That did not work for the 0.4.4 floppy. I suspect it may need the de4x5.gz driver in the "old" directory. Instead of figuring it out, I popped a RTL8139(D) card in my test-machine (built-in).

As for the modem, was it auto detected on cua0 or did you pick that port?
What brand of modem is it?

Good catch. I has manually set the port to the settings of the router currently in use, but had modem plugged into cua1 instead of cua0. I actually corrected that before you replied.

If this is a test machine or a new install, I would highly recommend running 0.4.4 over older versions of FREESCO and maybe even trying out the CD version which has all of the network drivers installed by default.

I did get 0.4.4 to dial-out on the test machine, but only after assiging network 0 an IP range and including a network card that was acutally detected. Initial error messages:

Sed: first RE must be non-null
!!! No network cards found !!!

current errors on 0.3.7 preventing proper operation (it dials out now):

FATAL ERROR..... IP address or use DHCP on network 0 required.

Because my networking needs had gotten more complicated, I may start using a minimal debian install as a router. In the past year I started signing my e-mail and have an interest in a VPN connection. The latter will probably require something more powerfull than the P90 I was planning on using for upgrading to IPv6 (if I want a connection speed of over 300kbps).

[Lightning]

Network 0 is a public-facing interface (to my ASDL modem). I can not give it a private IP range.

What you are asking is easily configured, the problem is this. If you want network 0 to face you DSL modem and you want it to dial out. Then you MUST configure the router as an ethernet router with two network cards. Configure network 0 to connect to the modem and network 1 to be your internal LAN. You then just add the modem configuration as a separate item and when you want the router to be a dialup machine you either type "mode dialup" and to go back "mode ethernet" or you can do it from the web control panel with just a click of the mouse and the router will switch modes. If you have more than one dialup ISP then those can also be added easily and choose them by "mode dialup isp1" or "mode dilaup isp2" where isp# is the name of the configured ISP. If you are just using one dialup ISP then the name is not required and or the "default" ISP will be chosen.
In your current configuration you have the router configured strictly as a dialup router and in that scenario network0 is always the internal private LAN and that is where you are having the problem. As stated FREESCO can easily do both and switch between them, but it must be configured as an ethernet router and have two network cards installed.

[phillipsjk256]

Thanks, it is working like a charm now.

I may still try 0.4.4 because I want to do a month-long bandwidth study before deciding how much to spend on Internet access. I think 0.4.4 should be able to run on my existing router with only minor tweaks to accomodate the mono screen and limited memory.

I suppose I should write some kind of howto document explaining this. Just creating a dial-out ISP entry and typing "mode dailup" is much simpler than the disk swapping I was envisioning.

Is there any easy way to disable dial-in just for the modem? I am not sure I want to leave it in autoanswer mode. (I could just disable dial-in altogether since I have not used the null modem cable in years.)

PS: Every packet on the modem link is logged. The messages on screen 3 stopped updating after reaching some limit (after about 40K packets). It does not appear to "fix" itself when I switch back to ethernet mode.

[Lightning]

I am VERY glad you got it working.

In the server section of the setup in the 04x series you can disable the RAS (Remote Access Server) so that it will not allow dial-in. In the 03x series it is in the advanced settings section option #52.

As for packet accounting in 03x for the modem.... I am unsure of any limitations for logging. I have not really done very much testing of the dial-out mode of FREESCO in quite a long time and even then it is through a phone line simulator and not a real world application. I have sort of figured if it ain't broke don't change anything and it should be fine.

P.S. if you write a howto I would be more than happy to post it in the FAQ section of the forum. FREESCO is really designed to do exactly what you are doing, but not many are actually using it's capabilities or possibly even know about them. Years ago it was important to have multiple dial-up ISP's and now most everyone has a high speed connection.

[phillipsjk256]

Is there any easy way to disable dial-in just for the modem? I am not sure I want to leave it in autoanswer mode. (I could just disable dial-in altogether since I have not used the null modem cable in years.)

The easy way I found is just turn off the modem. If it is turned back on before switching to dail-up mode, it should get initialized properly.

PS: Every packet on the modem link is logged. The messages on screen 3 stopped updating after reaching some limit (after about 40K packets). It does not appear to "fix" itself when I switch back to ethernet mode.

Multiplying 40k log entries by about 100 bytes each results in a number around 4MB. This is suspiciously close to the size of my ramdisks. How often is the logsize checked? When I checked hours later ram1 was back down to 2% usage.

Did I mention I was using a bittorrent client (which apparently uses something called peer exchange, resulting in many small packets even if not tranferring files) to establish baseline bandwidth usage while testing if my e-mail still didn't work (it didn't)? TL;DR: Those 40K packets were in the first hour. After 3 hours, I had transfered about 75K packets.

Update:
The router started acting "wonky", not giving out DHCP leases. The second time that happened, I used Ping6 for the first time to verify network connectivity between two client computers. Upon boot the machine was complaining about the wrong type of floppy drive installed. The machine keeps time, so I am unsure if the CMOS battery (from 1994 or so) may be the problem. It is one of those enclosed in a black box with the clock chip. I ran memtest86 for 12 hours (after installing VGA card), lucifer (CPU testing) for about 30 min. I ran the 3c5x9cfg (on Etherboot II disk) self tests on both 3com NICs installed. While trying to configure 0.4.4, I briefly got a random checker board/moire type pattern alternating in blue and black background in the setup menu.

I moved two of the cards to a P90 machine, underclocked to P75. I configured the 3Com card for "maximum modem speed" (aka "how long can I block interrupts") of 38400 baud, as opposed to the default 9600 baud. Used a RTL8139B card in place of one 3com card. The P90 would not boot initially, not even finding the floppy drive. Moving the CMOS battery jumper to "external" allowed booting, but obviously things need resetting if power is cut (CR2036 battery). Intial testing shows e-mail is still getting bounced by my webhost. BTW, the new machine has only one serial port, so RAS is simply disabled. New machine also has intergrated VGA, so bye bye mono screen too.

TL;DR: if you are not able to reproduce something described above, the machine may be suspect.