[vox-tech] Peters Kernal Update and a Few Questions

[Roland Minden]

As it happens I do not have an internet connection anymore. I was on the
AT&T Cable network and they were dropped by Excite@home. When I get a
connection again I will begin to work on it then. I am looking at using my
wife's connection to the internet using a router and a hub. I will need to
wire up my home though, but that should not be do bad. Dorie (my wife) has
Pac Bell ADSL. Any suggestions on a router? I am looking towards using a
wireless connection as an alternative. I am however very concerned about
security and lets face it WAP is not real security. Thanks for the advice.
BTW I was not able to download the Kernal before I lost connectivity :-( I
will have to wait on that also.

Roland Minden
Telecom Coordinator
Office	(916) 286-8999
Fax	(509) 275-2420
Cell	(916) 769-4368


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Newmiller [mailto:jdnewmil@dcn.davis.ca.us]
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 5:17 PM
To: vox-tech@lists.lugod.org
Subject: Re: [vox-tech] Peters Kernal Update and a Few Questions


On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

> begin: Roland Minden <rminden@Unilab.com> quote
[...]
> > I am having some trouble with my internet connection at home. I called
for
> > support and waited on hold for about 25 minutes (no joke I timed it).
When I
> > got hold of AT&T they asked what Operating system I had and as soon as I
> > said Linux they took this whole we can't help you with anything
attitude.
> > They also said I should be using DHCP. So I tried to set it up to use
DHCP
> > and it would not work. I get connected using the static IP, but I am not
> > able to get my usual connection speed. My connection speeds have been
really
> > crappy for about 3 weeks. I have a static IP and have checked it out as
far
> > as settings and it looks good. I thought it maybe be my cat5 cable so I
> > replaced it and it made little difference. At work I use Windows NT with
HP
> > OpenView to trouble shoot our network connections. Is there anything
like it
> > I can use with Linux?
> 
> troubleshoot exactly what?  what sorts of things do they give info on?
i'd
> eat my hat if you couldn't do the same thing on linux.

Be careful, Pete.  What you "can do" in Linux sometimes requires that
someone create the software to do so, which at best can take time.
This is particularly true in newer technologies like ATM cards.
Fortunately, DHCP _is_ supported, but it is a fairly complicated piece of
software that has had a history of signficant updates so troubleshooting
requires that you be familiar with "normal" networking under Linux as well
as that history.

> > I can ping successfully to yahoo.com. I can send and
> > receive email (though very slowly). I am starting to babble now. Let me
know
> > what information to send or any advice on how to deal with AT&T. I
thought
> > about telling them I have Winblows, but I would rather not have to do
that.
>  
> i'm sure it can be done, but i know literally nothing about DHCP.   i
don't
> even know what it stands for, although i can guess that D=dynamic and
> P=protocol.   :-)   i'm sure there are people here who use DHCP.   anyone
> help here?

The key for DHCP on Linux is dhclient, which broadcasts requests (possibly
with identifying information such as an assigned host name) and listens
for answers containing a wide variety of bits... ip address, mask, dns
server addresses, wins servers, whatever.  The newer versions of dhclient
handle more bits, putting them in the right files according to the
configuration of the client.

While I have used it briefly on other people's setups, I don't have
detailed experience with the mechanics of troubleshooting it because I was
assigned a static IP by DCN.  I guess you can read
http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP/ and find out more, but a grasp of the
fundamentals of network troubleshooting will be required if the
out-of-the-box scripts don't work for you.  Watch the error messages, look
in the usual network configuration files after dhclient gets an assignment
to see what the result was, use ping, ifconfig, route -n, and so forth to
see what it did to the kernel.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Newmiller                        The     .....       .....  Go Live...
DCN:<jdnewmil@dcn.davis.ca.us>        Basics: ##.#.       ##.#.  Live Go...
                                      Live:   OO#.. Dead: OO#..  Playing
Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries            O.O#.       #.O#.  with
/Software/Embedded Controllers)               .OO#.       .OO#.  rocks...2k
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