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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday 08 June 2002 1:42 pm, Ian P. Christian wrote:
Mailbox are linux friendly. the have linux guys that will talk to you on the phone! (might only apply to ADSL)
I had great fun with BT openworld last week:
Me: Hi, my line doesn't seem to be syncing any more
BTo Guy: Is the light on your adsl modem flashing?
Me: Yes
BT Guy: Have you tried turning your computer off, unplugging the modem from
your PC and leaving it for 5 minutes?
Me: Yes
BT Guy: Alright sir, can you right click on your dial up connection and tell
me the name of it?
Me: Err, I don't use windows, if thats what you are implying..
BT Guy: What do you use then, sir?
Me: Linux
BT Guy: Linux? I'v heard of that but don't know anyhting about it, can you
please click on start, dial up networking....
Me: But I don't use windows! I'm not asking you to support linux or
know anyhting about it, but ther eis a sync problem on my line, which
is nothing to do with the operating system, it's a problem either on
my line or at the exchange...
BT Guy: I'm sorry sir, we only support windows.
At this poiunt i went downstairs, dug out my windows laptop, plugged the frog
into it, and followed his rather useless instructions. He then rplied to me:
"It's probably a fault with the line or at the exhcnage sir, i'll issue a
support ticket, and someone will get back to you".
ARGHGHGH!!! BT!!! ARGHHH!!
needless to say, it worked the next day.
Jonathan Melhuish said:(not to mention it's probably a linux box you're dialling into).
sadly, i don't tihnk a single ISP's actually use linux as dial-in boxes any more, the sheer maths of it doesn't work out... out most you can probably get 128 serial ports in a PC, and thats pushing it... modems are then god knows how mucvh for ones than support 56k downstream, then you need to find a power supply for those 80 modems (ohh, imagine the FLR [flashy light ratio] though :p) you then have to get the lines into those modems. if you have any more than X (where X = number of modems you have) users connecting, then you'll need more than 1 dial-in server, which would make ISDN bonding impossible (granted, BTSmurftime still can't seem to get it right), pppd would need to run for each serial line which would mean you would need X number of pppd's running, so you'd need damn meaty boxes. smurfport/friaco is terminated by BT (or in rare cases with people like THUS they terminate themselfs, after going through all sorts of call routing pelavas), and once BT have terminated the call, an ip stream is pushed into the BT collossus cloud, where it magically (ahem, well, almost) appears out of the terminating lines ISP's rent from BT, each pipe being a multiple of 34MB (and always in pairs). The ISP then routes the packets like noremal. ISPs generally use BT (BT Ignite/Ignore to be exact) for the smurftime/fiasco, and then PRIs and standard dial in boxes (we use lucent) for the 0845/0800 - the lines probably provided by either BT (not BT Ignite), Energis, thus, colt, or Telewest. there are a fair few ISPs who actually use BT WebPort (or whatever it is called this month) which is a product offered by ignite wher ethey terminate the call, route it, *and* do the whole bandwidth thing - so you're not really dialing up to your ISP at all, the only thing you'd probbaly have to do with them is checking mail, etc... although radius is still ACK'ed from the ISP's server itself. thats for dial UP - ADSL is slightly more complicated, or easier, depending on which way you look at it ;) long gone are the days back in greece where we had 4 servers with 8 x 9.6k modems each, and that was the extent of our ISP operation - and our contention ratio was only about 4:1 ;)
Just as a side note, if anyone is interested in how this works (in most cases), take a look at http://serverwatch.internet.com/articles/radius/. It explains breifly the system used by more ISPs to handle the authentication/connection of modem users using Remote Authentication Dial- in User Service (RADIUS).
also worth reading for those interested is the cisco docs on radius: http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/Support/PSP/psp_view.pl?p=Internetworking:Radius though they are always slightly cisco oriantated, there is some good 'primers' - - infact i used to spend weeks reading the tac ;) the intel stuff is almost as good/bad (depending on how yuo look at it): http://www.intel.com/support/si/library/bi0400.htm radius is the protocol from hell. It's not been helped by microsoft doing the normal thign and butchering away, doing silly thigns like MS-CHAP [wait for the argument! - yes, CHAP sucks in general anyway!]. ~ Theo, who is all damn awake again now. ohh, and i have breakfast! - -- Theo Zourzouvillys http://zozo.org.uk/ You had some happiness once, but your parents moved away, and you had to leave it behind. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE9DEGv448CrwpTn6YRAk/ZAJ9jG5LgJqISVlTAAJz85w4fcZk9lwCeLsBw 9d6CqrdoowQ0S48UK2aVGzY= =JdPC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.