From: Brendan Kehoe (brendan at domain zen.org)
Date: Tue 28 Sep 1999 - 10:14:23 IST
> The cables should be ok, we're not using "special" ISDN cables here - just
> ethernet standard 'patch' leads. Our ISDN router is configured to
> "Euro-ISDN (EDSS1)".
Indeed, choosing the WebRamp choice of Euro_ISDN works. It turns out the
piece of the puzzle that was causing things to seemingly fail completely was
because the router was expecting to use CAPS authentication by default.
Adjusting it to instead use PAP authentication, and then trying a ping
somewhere (to make it dial up), made it finally work for the first time. It
was only about midnight, and I was wired on caffeine after struggling with it
for about four hours, so you can imagine the scene. :-) This was after I went
to the www.rampnet.com Web site to try to find out the actual syntax and usage
for their command-line interface. (hee hee, it's fairly clear that the
fancy-shmancy GUI that is the preferred way for configuring the router
actually just sends those same commands to the router. Their command line
interface also highly resembles VxWorks, btw.)
The WebRamp's working fine for us thus far. I'm going to try to write up the
exact steps I took and share 'em with the list so they can get archived, in
case someone else tries to figure out the same thing. The only negative for
the router was the price (about 450 pounds).
One interesting question: according to Telecom Internet, the ISP I chose for
the ISDN connection (they were said to have the fastest connection, according
to someone who was handling leased lines around here), they do not support the
use of Netscape's browser. They said they only can support Internet Explorer
for the use of their services. (I tried to struggle with her explaining that
it doesn't really matter---I avoided citing lynx as another option---but to no
avail.)
Couple that with the fact that I had to choose one of Windows95 or Windows98
as the platform, and being told by the ISP's tech support folks that they do
not support Linux as a platform for ISDN usage, and I really began to wonder
about how much farther things have to progress before non-Windows existance is
an option. (e.g., what if I'd called to say I want to wire a network of Macs;
would they reject it saying it's technically impossible?)
B
-- Brendan Kehoe Web page: http://www.zen.org/~brendan/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Thu 06 Feb 2003 - 13:04:37 GMT