BSD PPPoA Hardware

[Simon Morgan]

Hi,

I have a PPPoA ADSL connection and would like to use FreeBSD or OpenBSD
as a gateway/server and am looking for compatible hardware that would
facilitate this. I'm specifically looking to avoid combination modem
+ routers and NAT and port forwarding in particular. This will be
a pure routed IP setup. Obviously stability is very important (So
far I've been using a SpeedTouch 330 with Linux which hasn't been
fun).

Does anyone have any suggestions? Any advice is welcome.

Thanks.

Simon

[J.C. Roberts]

Post by Simon Morgan
Hi,
I have a PPPoA ADSL connection and would like to use FreeBSD or OpenBSD
as a gateway/server and am looking for compatible hardware that would
facilitate this. I'm specifically looking to avoid combination modem
+ routers and NAT and port forwarding in particular. This will be
a pure routed IP setup. Obviously stability is very important (So
far I've been using a SpeedTouch 330 with Linux which hasn't been
fun).
Does anyone have any suggestions? Any advice is welcome.
Thanks.
Simon

Hi Simon,

You seem to be confused on your terms. The term "PPPoA" means
Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (Asyncronous Transfer Mode). I
seriously doubt you're running ADSL over ATM. ;-)

What you're looking for is actually PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol
over Ethernet) since your (A)DSL modem has an ethernet connection to
your network and requires PPP to connect to your providers' network.

The answer is yes, OpenBSD does a very good job with PPPoE. There are
both userland and kernel implementations that can be used. I'm not
sure which flavor of hardware you prefer but basically you need a
platform that is supported by OpenBSD along with supported ethernet
devices.

http://www.openbsd.org/plat.html

Kind Regards,
JCR

[Simon Farnsworth]

Post by J.C. Roberts
You seem to be confused on your terms. The term "PPPoA" means
Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (Asyncronous Transfer Mode). I
seriously doubt you're running ADSL over ATM. ;-)

Given that G.992 DSL protocols are all ATM physical layers, it's quite likely
that he's running PPPoA. The (slight) advantage of PPPoA over PPPoE for ADSL
is twofold: firstly, the MTU is slightly larger. Secondly, there's one less
encapsulation layer involved; PPPoE on ADSL is in fact PPP over Ethernet over
ATM.

If you don't believe that ADSL is an ATM physical layer, go read G.992.1 (the
international ADSL standard), or a manufacturer's spec sheet (like
http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/vigor2600plus.html), where it explicitly
refers to "ATM Protocols".
--
Simon Farnsworth

[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

[J.C. Roberts]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 08:20:33 +0100, Simon Farnsworth

Post by Simon Farnsworth

Post by J.C. Roberts
You seem to be confused on your terms. The term "PPPoA" means
Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (Asyncronous Transfer Mode). I
seriously doubt you're running ADSL over ATM. ;-)

Given that G.992 DSL protocols are all ATM physical layers, it's quite likely
that he's running PPPoA. The (slight) advantage of PPPoA over PPPoE for ADSL
is twofold: firstly, the MTU is slightly larger. Secondly, there's one less
encapsulation layer involved; PPPoE on ADSL is in fact PPP over Ethernet over
ATM.
If you don't believe that ADSL is an ATM physical layer, go read G.992.1 (the
international ADSL standard), or a manufacturer's spec sheet (like
http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/vigor2600plus.html), where it explicitly
refers to "ATM Protocols".

Great info Simon, thank you. All the DSL modems I've seen here in the
USA are ethernet based on the user side and as misfortune would have
it, many providers *require* using their particular modem, so the user
side of it is all that matters. It's all been consumer grade kit, even
though a lot of it is in business use, none the less, I have not seen
a DSL modem with ATM on the user side (probably because it would be
pointless to make it that way).

Assuming you don't have a provider requirement of using their
specified DSL modem, it may be possible to use OpenBSD as a
*replacement* for the DSL modem itself. I know we've got some degree
of ATM support but I don't know how well (or if) all the other needed
stuff works.


Kind Regards,
JCR

[Stuart Henderson]

Post by J.C. Roberts
Assuming you don't have a provider requirement of using their
specified DSL modem, it may be possible to use OpenBSD as a
*replacement* for the DSL modem itself. I know we've got some degree
of ATM support but I don't know how well (or if) all the other needed
stuff works.

'man -k dsl' picks up ueagle(4), added post-3.7.

[Diana Eichert]

Post by Stuart Henderson

Post by J.C. Roberts
Assuming you don't have a provider requirement of using their
specified DSL modem, it may be possible to use OpenBSD as a
*replacement* for the DSL modem itself. I know we've got some degree
of ATM support but I don't know how well (or if) all the other needed
stuff works.

'man -k dsl' picks up ueagle(4), added post-3.7.

You beat me to the post. Unfortunately for me it doesn't support "ADSL
over ISDN". I'm one of those poor souls that uses iDSL to connect to the
Big-I, to far away from the CO, then I could ditch my ancient iDSL
"router".

diana

[Siegbert Marschall]

Hi,

Post by Diana Eichert
You beat me to the post. Unfortunately for me it doesn't support "ADSL
over ISDN". I'm one of those poor souls that uses iDSL to connect to the
Big-I, to far away from the CO, then I could ditch my ancient iDSL
"router".

you could give this one a try.

http://accoom.kd85.com/

iDSL is very similar to SDSL at 144kbit/s, physical layer is identical,
the differences are at the protocol layer.

there is no guarantee there, but one could experiment...


bye, Siggi.

[Karsten McMinn]

Post by J.C. Roberts
All the DSL modems I've seen here in the
USA are ethernet based on the user side and as misfortune would have
it, many providers *require* using their particular modem, so the user
side of it is all that matters.

On the west coast Its the opposite. Everything is mostly bridged
dmt-ish dsl, they couldn't care less whether you buy your own
equipment or use whatever brand they are selling.

[Shane J Pearson]

Post by J.C. Roberts
Great info Simon, thank you. All the DSL modems I've seen here in the
USA are ethernet based on the user side and as misfortune would have
it, many providers *require* using their particular modem, so the user
side of it is all that matters. It's all been consumer grade kit, even
though a lot of it is in business use, none the less, I have not seen
a DSL modem with ATM on the user side (probably because it would be
pointless to make it that way).

In Australia I am using a Netgear DG632 consumer grade ADSL MODEM/Router
with PPPoA. The 'A' refers to the line side, not the ethernet side which
runs into my OpenBSD firewall.

MODEM mode with this unit seems to be a "half bridge mode" which
actually works.

I don't know if the use of PPPoA is common in Australia, but every ADSL
MODEM/Router I have seen over here has had PPPoA as an option.

[jared r r spiegel]

Post by J.C. Roberts
On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 08:20:33 +0100, Simon Farnsworth

Post by Simon Farnsworth

Post by J.C. Roberts
You seem to be confused on your terms. The term "PPPoA" means
Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (Asyncronous Transfer Mode). I
seriously doubt you're running ADSL over ATM. ;-)

Given that G.992 DSL protocols are all ATM physical layers, it's quite likely
that he's running PPPoA. The (slight) advantage of PPPoA over PPPoE for ADSL
is twofold: firstly, the MTU is slightly larger. Secondly, there's one less
encapsulation layer involved; PPPoE on ADSL is in fact PPP over Ethernet over
ATM.
If you don't believe that ADSL is an ATM physical layer, go read G.992.1 (the
international ADSL standard), or a manufacturer's spec sheet (like
http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/vigor2600plus.html), where it explicitly
refers to "ATM Protocols".

Great info Simon, thank you. All the DSL modems I've seen here in the
USA are ethernet based on the user side and as misfortune would have
it, many providers *require* using their particular modem, so the user
side of it is all that matters.

i wonder if that's s/require/only support/

eg, others will work, but don't expect to be able to call anyone
and get a "yes that will work, here's what you need it to configure
it as <blahblah>", but that doesn't preclude the modem from being
able to function on the network just fine.

i haven't shopped around, but i imagine that a DSL modem on the market
for end-users to buy would probably not be very successful unless it
supported the standard suite/combination of parameters that the DSLAM
you're below is going to expect.

modems i have PPPoA experience with (second-hand, as the portion
of the network i'm on is not PPPoA):
speedstream 5930, 5861, 5667, 5200, dlink 504, 3com 812.

the 5667 was a trooper, but had limited ability to do inbound
forwarding (eg, "rdr" in pf). the 5200s had a better firmware
but weren't as reliable in poor line condition situations (just
fine if line isn't marginal) and had no activity LED, and
used "DSL" to indicate both sync with dslam (solid green),
training/losing sync (slow blink), no sync (off) and activity
(fast blink). kinda ambiguous.

the 5861 is cute because it has a CLI and 4 ports, but the
"services" it provides are probably of no value to someone running
any unix/linux. the 5930 has IPsec crapola, but again, what
value is that to someone who has isakmpd? (outside of being able
to avoid NAT-T... woo)

i'm willing to be wrong, but i would imagine that if you find a
thingy that says it is an A) DSL Modem who B) supports PPPoA, and
you get DSL from the ISP and they use PPPoA, it'll only be a matter
of getting the right configuration. the hardest thing would be
to know the PVC that you should program into the modem so that it
matches the cross connect on your port on the DSLAM you're on.

tech support *should* be able to answer that, i hope. eg:
"hi, i'm going through the setup of my DSL modem, and i've got
it all sorted out, except i forgot what VPI/VCI to put in here"

there's at least some chance they won't ask you what modem you're
using, etc; at that point you have a potential to be a 30 second
call for them. that's pure gold.

the thread has kinda gone this way already, but i believe the only
way you can get true "i don't have NAT" on PPPoA, outside of getting a
"business class" service plan (or anything else with static IP WAN
and LAN allocations) is going to have to end up with you running
PPP daemon/process on your machine. for it to leave your PC to
the modem as ATM would be a rare hardware combination. outside of
a niche market, it would probably be rare to find one that didn't
take a phone cord coming in and an ethernet cord going out.

it's possible

i suppose
there could be a


It's all been consumer grade kit, even

Post by J.C. Roberts
though a lot of it is in business use, none the less, I have not seen
a DSL modem with ATM on the user side (probably because it would be
pointless to make it that way).
Assuming you don't have a provider requirement of using their
specified DSL modem, it may be possible to use OpenBSD as a
*replacement* for the DSL modem itself. I know we've got some degree
of ATM support but I don't know how well (or if) all the other needed
stuff works.

that would be

Post by J.C. Roberts
Kind Regards,
JCR

-

[ openbsd 3.7 GENERIC ( jul 12 ) // i386 ]

[jared r r spiegel]

Post by jared r r spiegel
take a phone cord coming in and an ethernet cord going out.
it's possible
i suppose
there could be a

please forget this train of thought.

Post by jared r r spiegel

Post by J.C. Roberts
it may be possible to use OpenBSD as a
*replacement* for the DSL modem itself. I know we've got some degree
of ATM support but I don't know how well (or if) all the other needed
stuff works.

that would be

that would be me hitting send instead of postpone..

sigh.

anyway, that would be hot.

before i do any more damage...^[

--

jared

[Shane J Pearson]

Hi Jared,

Post by jared r r spiegel
the thread has kinda gone this way already, but i believe the only
way you can get true "i don't have NAT" on PPPoA, outside of
getting a
"business class" service plan (or anything else with static IP WAN
and LAN allocations) is going to have to end up with you running
PPP daemon/process on your machine. for it to leave your PC to
the modem as ATM would be a rare hardware combination.

"Half-bridge mode" or in the case of my Netgear DG632, "MODEM mode",
allows me to use PPPoA in such a way that the MODEM deals with the
PPPoA, my OpenBSD firewall sees packets destined to my external public
IP address and I can use an MTU of 1500. No NAT being used on the
MODEM. I am using NAT on my firewall though and I have a static IP.

I have not been able to get a Netcomm MODEM/Router with "half-bridge
mode" to be able to do this though.


Shane

[Rod.. Whitworth]

Post by Shane J Pearson
Hi Jared,

Post by jared r r spiegel
the thread has kinda gone this way already, but i believe the only
way you can get true "i don't have NAT" on PPPoA, outside of
getting a
"business class" service plan (or anything else with static IP WAN
and LAN allocations) is going to have to end up with you running
PPP daemon/process on your machine. for it to leave your PC to
the modem as ATM would be a rare hardware combination.

"Half-bridge mode" or in the case of my Netgear DG632, "MODEM mode",
allows me to use PPPoA in such a way that the MODEM deals with the
PPPoA, my OpenBSD firewall sees packets destined to my external public
IP address and I can use an MTU of 1500. No NAT being used on the
MODEM. I am using NAT on my firewall though and I have a static IP.
I have not been able to get a Netcomm MODEM/Router with "half-bridge
mode" to be able to do this though.
Shane

I had no success with a Netcomm NB1300 either. I gave up debugging it
but I can tell you that it drives the dhclient mad on OpenBSD because
it only issues 60 second leases which results in 30 second renewal
requests.
Yeccchhhh!

I have a swag of client sites where I set the modem up to PPPoALLC ,
NAT on, DMZ Host = 192.168.1.2 (the static IP for the firewall and then
it works just as well with all traffic to the WAN IP hitting the
firewall. It is not obvious to casual inspection and the client sites
are rsyncing data around Australia quite happily. MTU=1500 of course.

I have a /29 here and don't need to do that NAT/DMZ thing. I just
assign the first of the usable IPs to my server LAN NIC and st the
routing table in the modem to route the /29 to 192.168.1.2 and it all
works.

The NAT rule for the user LAN does :
nat on $ext_if from $lan to any -> $fwint
where $fwint is set to the IP address of the server LAN NIC.

and so I don't need the WAN address on the box at all.

There are lots more rules to get all the tricks firing.
Ask and ye shall receive by private email. Use ash1 at my domain.

Post by Shane J Pearson
From the land "down under": Australia.

Do we look <umop apisdn> from up over?

Do NOT CC me - I am subscribed to the list.
Replies to the sender address will fail except from the list-server.

[Simon Slaytor]

Post by J.C. Roberts
You seem to be confused on your terms. The term "PPPoA" means
Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (Asyncronous Transfer Mode). I
seriously doubt you're running ADSL over ATM. ;-)

He could be right, in the UK PPPoE is very rare most providers instead
prefer to present their ADSL connections as pure ATM circuits requiring
PPPoA.

There's a nice little racket on ebay.co.uk at the moment with someone
selling 'Nortel E20B ethernet modems' and advertising them as operating
in RFC1483 bridge mode i.e. PPPoE which they do. The seller does not
however tell people that the units won't easily work with PPPoA
connections as found in the UK.

Money for old rope!

[Simon Slaytor]

Post by Simon Slaytor
There's a nice little racket on ebay.co.uk at the moment with someone
selling 'Nortel E20B ethernet modems' and advertising them as
operating in RFC1483 bridge mode i.e. PPPoE which they do. The seller
does not however tell people that the units won't easily work with
PPPoA connections as found in the UK.

fwiw, PPPoE should work in UK too, it's been in the relevant BT SIN
for a while now.

FWIW not all of us have BT as our ADSL line provider, I say line as
obviously the circuit and Internet connectivity aspects of an ADSL
service can be provided by different company's.

Also because many of you unfortunates DO have BT and they are rather
tardy in their replacement schedule for the older PPPoA DSLAM's the
statement whilst slightly generalised still holds true.

[d***@iompost.co.im]

Post by J.C. Roberts
You seem to be confused on your terms. The term "PPPoA" means
Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (Asyncronous Transfer Mode). I
seriously doubt you're running ADSL over ATM. ;-)

You must now stand corrected :-)

In Britain (and probably the rest of Europe), that is precisely how ADSL is
done - with ATM (rather than PPPoE, which is how it's done in North America).
There are probably more ATM over ADSL installations in the world than there
are Ethernet over ADSL connections!

To answer the original poster, the only common ADSL modem I've found that's
supported by non-Windows operating systems is the Alcatel SpeedTouch USB
(there are probably others, but the SpeedTouch USB is probably the most
widely used and supported). There is a project with userland drivers which
works on Linux and all the BSDs as far as I'm aware. I've been using OpenBSD
on a Sun Ultra 5 with one of these USB ADSL modems.

Your starting point should probably be:

http://www.xsproject.org/speedtouch/

[Reyk Floeter]

Post by d***@iompost.co.im
You must now stand corrected :-)
In Britain (and probably the rest of Europe), that is precisely how ADSL is
done - with ATM (rather than PPPoE, which is how it's done in North America).
There are probably more ATM over ADSL installations in the world than there
are Ethernet over ADSL connections!

i've never seen PPPoA for consumer adsl here in germany. normally it's
PPPoE (T-Com, Arcor, Q-DSL, ...). indeed, early dsl modems from ECI
used by T-Com had both, an ATM-25 and an ethernet port but i think ATM
was disabled. have look at ebay germany for "T-DSL ECI".

reyk

[Henning Brauer]

Post by Reyk Floeter

Post by d***@iompost.co.im
You must now stand corrected :-)
In Britain (and probably the rest of Europe), that is precisely how ADSL is
done - with ATM (rather than PPPoE, which is how it's done in North America).
There are probably more ATM over ADSL installations in the world than there
are Ethernet over ADSL connections!

i've never seen PPPoA for consumer adsl here in germany. normally it's
PPPoE (T-Com, Arcor, Q-DSL, ...). indeed, early dsl modems from ECI
used by T-Com had both, an ATM-25 and an ethernet port but i think ATM
was disabled. have look at ebay germany for "T-DSL ECI".

it is all ATM on the provider side, ethernet just on the CPE.

[Simon Slaytor]

Another solution is to buy an ethernet modem that supports 'Half Bridge
Mode'. I have two such units, an ADSL Nation X-Modem and a Zoom X4.

When operating in half bridge the modem does all the PPPoA negotiation
with the DSL provider to login and obtain and IP address. Once done it
acts as a DHCP server and leases out the IP address just obtained to the
connected host.


-----Private LAN---->(1st Eth Card)[OBSD FIREWALL](2nd Eth
Card)------>[ADSL Modem]-------PPPoA connection-----> Internet


Once the link is setup the modem becomes 'transparent' and the OBSD
see's all traffic from the NET, no reverse NAT, port forwarding or
anything and to make life even better the OBSD only needs an Ethernet
card with DHCP enabled!

I've got a little Nokia IP120 running 3.6 and a EPIAM9000 running 3.7
both running in this manner. The Nokia does IPsec with a Checkpoint box
and the EPIA Runs OpenVPN, sweet!

Post by Simon Morgan
Hi,
I have a PPPoA ADSL connection and would like to use FreeBSD or OpenBSD
as a gateway/server and am looking for compatible hardware that would
facilitate this. I'm specifically looking to avoid combination modem
+ routers and NAT and port forwarding in particular. This will be
a pure routed IP setup. Obviously stability is very important (So
far I've been using a SpeedTouch 330 with Linux which hasn't been
fun).
Does anyone have any suggestions? Any advice is welcome.
Thanks.
Simon

[Simon Morgan]

Post by Simon Morgan
Does anyone have any suggestions? Any advice is welcome.

To anyone who might be reading this in the future (Hi! Do you have robots
and flying cars yet?), I've given up looking for a native solution. The
state of ADSL hardware support under BSD as well as Linux is shockingly
bad and simply isn't worth bothering with. The Sangoma S518 looked pretty
promising but last I checked there still weren't any available to purchase
in the UK and the shipment from their manufacturer keeps on getting
delayed. I can only hope their engineers are more competent.

I bought a Sagem ***@st 800 to use with the ueagle driver and have had
nothing but trouble with it in the 4 days I've been using it. It seems to
work fine under Windows so I can only assume the driver is to blame.

So that leaves cheap and nasty combination modem and routers or Cisco
hardware. I've ordered a Cisco SOHO 97.

Thanks to everyone who replied.

[Simon Morgan]

i've been using an Alcatel Speedtouch usb modem with openbsd 3.7 with no
problems. take a look...http://www.speedtouchdsl.com/prod330.htm

How stable has it been?

i have a few documents which explains how to get it working, if you want
them mail me.

I'd appreciate that, thanks.

[Dylan Smith]

Post by Simon Morgan

i've been using an Alcatel Speedtouch usb modem with openbsd 3.7 with no
problems. take a look...http://www.speedtouchdsl.com/prod330.htm

How stable has it been?

I use the same modem on a Sun Ultra 5 (sparc64) running OpenBSD 3.6 - it is
very stable, currently my ADSL line's uptime is 160 days without
interruption.

[Jon Drews]

Post by Simon Morgan

Post by Simon Morgan
Does anyone have any suggestions? Any advice is welcome.

To anyone who might be reading this in the future (Hi! Do you have robots
and flying cars yet?), I've given up looking for a native solution. The
state of ADSL hardware support under BSD as well as Linux is shockingly
bad and simply isn't worth bothering with.

Hi Simon and others:

I am using an Actiontec model GT701R DSL modem for PPPoA here on
OpenBSD 3.6. It was easy to configure.

The Modem itself has the address of 192.168.0.1 and does the Network
Address Translation.
First, I did:
/usr/bin/sudo ifconfig bge0 inet 192.168.0.5 netmask 255.255.255.0
then
/usr/bin/sudo route add default 192.168.0.1

Afterwards, I configured it with Firefox. Lynx or Links would not work.

The DSL modem and PPPoA works like a charm.

[poncenby]

Post by Simon Morgan

Post by Simon Morgan
Does anyone have any suggestions? Any advice is welcome.

To anyone who might be reading this in the future (Hi! Do you have robots
and flying cars yet?), I've given up looking for a native solution. The
state of ADSL hardware support under BSD as well as Linux is shockingly
bad and simply isn't worth bothering with. The Sangoma S518 looked pretty
promising but last I checked there still weren't any available to purchase
in the UK and the shipment from their manufacturer keeps on getting
delayed. I can only hope their engineers are more competent.
nothing but trouble with it in the 4 days I've been using it. It seems to
work fine under Windows so I can only assume the driver is to blame.
So that leaves cheap and nasty combination modem and routers or Cisco
hardware. I've ordered a Cisco SOHO 97.

i've been using an Alcatel Speedtouch usb modem with openbsd 3.7 with no
problems. take a look...http://www.speedtouchdsl.com/prod330.htm

i have a few documents which explains how to get it working, if you want
them mail me.

poncenby

[Nathan Gould]

Just for interest, I've set this up successfully using a Zoom X4 (about #45)

using half bridge but originally ran into problems getting the OBSD box to

collect the address via DHCP on the external interface when in this mode (no such

problems without half-bridge).



Eventually, narrowed it down to the default route being allocated. A slighltly

modified dhclient-script later, specified in dhclient.conf, and all works perfectly.



<

81c80

< route add default -iface $new_ip_address >/dev/null 2>&1

---

route add default $router >/dev/null 2>&1

85d83

<



---- Msg sent via @Mail - http://www.advance-internet.com

[Simon Slaytor]

Currently using a zoom x4 modem in half bridge mode with 3.6 stable and
haven't had any problems with dhclient obtaining a lease from the modem
so maybe it's a 3.7 thing?.

I'm just about to move to 3.7 current so this is worthwhile knowing.

Many thanks.

Post by Nathan Gould
Just for interest, I've set this up successfully using a Zoom X4 (about #45)
using half bridge but originally ran into problems getting the OBSD box to
collect the address via DHCP on the external interface when in this mode (no such
problems without half-bridge).
Eventually, narrowed it down to the default route being allocated. A slighltly
modified dhclient-script later, specified in dhclient.conf, and all works perfectly.
<
81c80
< route add default -iface $new_ip_address >/dev/null 2>&1
---

route add default $router >/dev/null 2>&1

85d83
<