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Doctor Olds
I Need A Remedy For What's Ailing Me.
Premium,VIP
join:2001-04-19
1970 442 W30
clubs:
| reply to pivonka571
Re: Questions about reconnecting to ELN DSL service
Hardware PPPoE is light years ahead in stability compared to Software PPPoE on your PC, IMHO. The UHP Modem has hardware PPPoE built-in. Anytime you can reduce the number of running programs on the PC leaves more resources for your other programs. 
Why do you need Wins? Are you running a multi-PC LAN? I don't use it in my 8 Year old mixed LAN (XP, Win9x, OS/2) and everything works as it should. Here is my setup.
You should be able to go though 85% of those FAQ links in under 2 hours leaving the harder ones for later. Most of them are just quick settings or reading to get you up to speed on UHP.
If you have only one PC then you can run PPPoE on it, but I suggest you replace both 98 and XP current setups with RASPPPoE instead.
»EarthLink DSL FAQ »How can I disable router mode on the UHP modem?
Note, while in Bridge Mode (so the PC's PPPoE will work) you cannot access the Modem's Private IP. That is Standard RFC for not allowing routing to access a Private IP while your Ethernet Card has a Public IP. Disconnection of the PPPoE session on the PC will then restore the ability to access the UHP Modem's Interface if you set a Static IP in the range/netblock of the UHP Modem's LAN.
»EarthLink DSL FAQ »Can I see what the UHP Modem's Web (HTTP) Interface looks like?
Regards,
Doctor Olds
--
What’s the point of owning a supercar if you can’t scare yourself stupid from time to time? | |
pivonka571
join:2005-02-03
La Crosse, KS
| All hail, Dr. Olds!
That's the information I needed to figure out how to get my connection. It's not fast, and there are questions left unresolved, but it's working and holding.
I could not access the new Xyxel Prestige 645M UHP modem because I used PPPOE to access the internet over the former Westell Wirespeed modem, which did not support IP addressing by the NIC on the local machine. Since TCP/IP was not required, and I had no router or LAN here, the NIC was not bound to the TSP/IP protocol and could not access the Zyxel modem.
With LAN NIC binding to TCP/IP (but TCP/IP for LAN NIC not bound to any local "Client" or "Service") the NIC acquires an IP address, acts as a DHCP Server, and acts as a Default Gateway. It is difficult to visualize how this improves security on the local machine. :-( But it does give access to the modem ROM interface, where I found that the modem was in its default UHP mode setting.
UHP mode was not useable without having both the LAN setup for TCP/IP and entering the user name and password in the modem setup.
The failing DSL connections to the internet had been made by the local machine PPPOE software; that fact led to conflicts with the modem mode in place, and that caused the rapid failure of internet connectivity - though not a disconnect of the connection itself.
Two corrective options were available:
1) The modem could be left in UHP mode, the NIC could be left with TCP/IP enabled, and the user name and password entered so that the modem could establish and maintain connection to the PPPOE server. The old software PPPOE connections would be disused or uninstalled.
2) The UHP mode could be disabled, so the modem acted in bridge mode, and the local machine could use software PPPOE to establish and authenticate connections. Optionally, the TCP/IP software binding to the local machine NIC could be removed or left in place. (And thanks for reminding me I did not need WINS enabled, either.)
I chose the second option, with TCP/IP binding not in place for the NIC. The connection persists and tests out at:
dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-05-20 21:36:15 EST:
735 / 102
Your download speed : 735 kbps or 91.9 KB/sec.
That is 58.6% worse than an average user on covad.net
Your upload speed : 102 kbps or 12.8 KB/sec.
That is 73.9% worse than an average user on covad.net When I return from my travel I will need to run comparable tests on the UHP mode option, to see if the modem's mode has any impact on the connection speed. 7 to 10 it does not, in this location, which has some telephone line issues. (COVAD has set the line to "stability mode" due to line issues, and needs an Earthlink work order to address them.)
I chose to continue use of software PPPOE because it has worked well for the past 6 years, and because I did not want to bind TCP/IP to my NIC in the absence of a hardware firewall between it and the outside world.
I think the best long term solution may be to purchase a combination DSL modem, router, and hardware firewall, with wireless capability, and substitute it for the Zyxel. Then the software PPPOE on the local machine becomes truly redundant, and can be uninstalled.
Finally, I am 90% convinced that both Earthlink and Covad are mistaken in believing that there is no inherent incompatibity between the Westell Wirespeed modem and their provisioning of DSL to Earthlink customers.
This modem was working fine when the UUnet provisioning was terminated. And the current settings on the computer, supporting a stable Zyxel mediated connection, are identical to those which supported the Westell Wirespeed, so far as I can determine.
There is plenty of room for incompatibilities between the way the Westell modem passes software PPPOE originated UDP discovery requests to the provisioning servers, and the way the Zyxel does so. And the provisioning servers may react to differences by refusing to recognize and discarding "malformed" UDP discovery requests. Such incompatibilities apparently result in the server not recognizing or or not processing the Westell mediated requests.
If someone can find me a Westell Wirespeed modem (the plain, no model number, non IP addressable version) user whose modem survived the Earthlink initiated change in provisioning from UUnet to COVAD, I might change my bet on this.
Until then, I think both companies are in denial, and are spending their own and their customers' time and energy barking up the wrong problem solving tree. The first response should be to replace the Wirespeed modem.
Thanks again. I really, really appreciate the information, and the effort you made to give me a hand with this. | |
pivonka571
join:2005-02-03
La Crosse, KS
| reply to Doctor Olds
Dr. Olds:
Below are Win XP data for the newly reconnected (thanks to your help) Earthlink DSL service.
The PPPOE direct to the internet setup using the DSL modem in bridge configuration, rather the UHP mode NAT Network device which would require TCP/IP on the NIC, looks nice and clean to me. These XP results are even simpler than those in Win 98.
I guess there is a trade off, where the NIC could carry the load of TCP/IP handling (if it has the brains with which to do that) and the NAT / UHP mode modem could handle the PPPOE connection, relieving the local machine of those loads.
But I am not sure that NIC's are so smart that they contribute all that much - and know of at least one company with patents on smart NIC technology that is selling the ability to offload session management onto the NIC as their business plan - the motive being that multiple session management is a large load that does not belong in the CPU environment and does belong on the NIC.
So I am pretty happy with this simple IPconfig report, and a NIC that has no protocols other than QOS packet management bound to it. And I wonder if there may be a security advantage, since the NIC / LAN TCP/IP facility would not be protected by a hardware firewall, here.
ipconfig /all
Windows IP Configuration
Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : 322nnn
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
PPP adapter Earthlink:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-53-45-00-00-00
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 67.101.37.41
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.255
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 67.101.37.41
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 207.69.188.185
207.68.188.186
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled
netstat -ano
Active Connections
Proto Local Address Foreign Address State PID
TCP 0.0.0.0:1025 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 4
TCP 0.0.0.0:1027 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 2004
TCP 0.0.0.0:1084 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 1612
TCP 67.101.37.41:1084 66.110.201.18:80 ESTABLISHED 1612
TCP 127.0.0.1:1026 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 2004
TCP 127.0.0.1:1026 127.0.0.1:1027 ESTABLISHED 2004
TCP 127.0.0.1:1027 127.0.0.1:1026 ESTABLISHED 2004
PID 2004 is the Mozilla mail session
PID 1612 is the MyNetWatchman session
PID 4 is some system process I cannot identify. Wish I could.
Speed: Still not good.
dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-05-21 01:27:42 EST:
753 / 105
Your download speed : 753 kbps or 94.1 KB/sec.
That is 58% worse than an average user on covad.net
Your upload speed : 105 kbps or 13.1 KB/sec.
That is 73.6% worse than an average user on covad.net
This is a Covad provisioned Earthlink DSL line, over ATT/SBC local loop, about 6 blocks from the telco switching center.
Thanks again for your help, so very much.
Jim Pivonka | |
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