marcw
join:2001-05-18
Saint Paul, MN | Speedtouch and real IP address As some of you may recall from previous posts, I had a desire and necessity to to get my real IP address distributed to my LAN. I won a Speedtouch 530 auction off of Ebay and it arrived a couple days ago.
Short story: after much hair pulling, googling, and teeth gnashing, I got it to work via dhcp spoofing. I now have my static Qwest IP address direct to my LAN. The angels did sing and all is once again well with the world.
Much longer story: I'll spare you the details unless requested since I doubt that many or any Qwest customers will buy a Speedtouch.
One side note about the Speedtouch 530; it does NOT train at 1024kbps as I recall stated in their documentation and literature. The highest I've been able to train at is 896. No matter if I leave it in multimode, or go directly to g.dmt or ansi can I get it higher than 896. But I guess I'm willing to sacrifice a few kbps just to have the real IP address. |
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Reviews:
 ·Future Nine Corp..
| Well, hell yes, tell us about your Speedtouch and DHCP spoofing. If I ever get my Speedtouch (my first order got dropped by Speedtouchdsl!) I'll be interested in how you got DHCP spoofing working. I am also willing to drop a few kbps upload to get a real IP address. |
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marcw
join:2001-05-18
Saint Paul, MN | I was beginning to think that *no* one had a Speedtouch interest. But y'know, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that I what I learned could actually be applied to other modems.
I'm glad I didn't post details when I wrote that last note. Things have changed. I think you and I were of like mind that the only way to get a real IP address with a PPPoA connection was a) half bridging/dhcp spoofing or b) an internal PCI modem or c) purchasing a block of statics. I learned there's a fourth way - tunneling with PPTP.
I did indeed get DHCP spoofing working, but only for a short time. And considering the difficulties I had getting it to work the first time and then losing the connection and having problems getting it reconnected, I searched for an alternative and arrived at PPTP.
Since I like stories, here's the short story - tunneling works and is reliable. My connection has been up for something over 72 hours without a hiccup. And I've been beating it up quite hard.
Just a little background. I wanted the real IP address so that I could get my servers, including VoIP working right. There's quite a few things out there that don't work well with private addressing. My firewall, servers, and the whole LAN works better with a real addressing. However, the firewall and servers are Linux. Fortunately, my firewall, IPCop, has a fairly obscure FAQ entry by someone who obviously ran into the same issues as I did. Fortunately also, he has a Speedtouch. And fortunately for me, he provided guidance. Here's the link to the FAQ entry:
»www.ipcop.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view···_Speedto
Basically, you're telling the Speedtouch to *not* make a connection but rather pass the PPP on through the tunnel to the PPTP client which then has to know what to do with the encapsulated PPPoA. Luckily for me, my firewall has a built in pptp client and also can act as a PPPoA endpoint. The FAQ does a better job than I of explaining the details
What's a little weird is that the modem doesn't connect. The connect light never lights up. It's just passing the PPP on to the PPTP client, never being the endpoint. Another thing that's going to take some getting used to is that my firewall now has an additional interface, ppp0, which of course is a virtual interface. That's the interface that has my real address. My eth0 interface has my private LAN addresses and my eth1 has the 10.0.0.138 Speedtouch address. Also, I'm not able to communicate with the Speedtouch unless I kill the tunnel but I suppose that would be expected when you think about it.
I've got a feeling that other modems can also encapulate the PPP in the tunnel and pass it along but I don't know for sure. All I know is that after finding these instructions I had a real IP address inside my firewall inside of an hour. Not only that, it worked the very first time I plugged it in. Oh, and my complaint about the upload speed being lower than rated was unjustified. I went back to all the Speedtouch documentation and all I could find was references to 832kbps. I obviously was recalling things incorrectly. Heck, my 896 is 64 more than rated! |
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| Hmmm. Good stuff. I'm going to have to chew on this PPTP connection mechanism and see if it makes sense. I was getting partial to the DHCP Spoofing mechanism. |
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 adsldudePremium,Ex-Mod 2003-9
join:2000-11-10
Colorado
kudos:1 | reply to marcw
said by marcw:
I learned there's a fourth way - tunneling with PPTP.
It's called PPTP Relay and other devices can support it. Here's a link to a post using the Efficient 5660:
»5660 PPTP Relay issues |
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marcw
join:2001-05-18
Saint Paul, MN | reply to bigjoesmith
said by bigjoesmith:
Hmmm. Good stuff. I'm going to have to chew on this PPTP connection mechanism and see if it makes sense. I was getting partial to the DHCP Spoofing mechanism.
So was I. That is until I quit reading and started doing. That's when I discovered how finicky the whole dhcp spoofing concept really is. For starters, the client computer will sometimes (and in my case, frequently) need to release and renew the dhcp lease in order to get the real ip because it thinks it *already has* an ip address (the 10.0.0.1 as handed out by the modem's dhcp server). It doesn't see a need to go get another one, which would be the real ip addr that you want it to have. Compounding things further, the dhcp server itself may not see any need to hand out another (the real) address to the client. Matter of fact, it already has the client's MAC addr in the dhcp table so even *that* has to be purged manually in order for the client to be released from the 10.0.0.1 addr in order to pick up the new, real addr.
All in all, doable but a real pain. And after having discovered an entirely painless way of achieving the same results - tunneling - I wouldn't even consider going back.
If you pusue spoofing, I would love to hear about your results. |
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marcw
join:2001-05-18
Saint Paul, MN | reply to adsldude
said by adsldude:
said by marcw:
I learned there's a fourth way - tunneling with PPTP.
It's called PPTP Relay and other devices can support it. Here's a link to a post using the Efficient 5660:
»5660 PPTP Relay issues
I'm not at all sure that MTU discussion contained in that link is relevant to me. It mentions the differing MTU needs of PPTP. Since my current speed test results doing PPPoA over PPTP are almost identical to those results I achieved doing normal PPPoA, I don't see the need to tweak anything. |
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adsldudePremium,Ex-Mod 2003-9
join:2000-11-10
Colorado
kudos:1 | Here's another link that goes through the 5660 PPTP Relay basics:
»Efficient Networks Forum FAQ »On PPPoA how do I Bridge a 5660 to get the Public IP to my PC or 2nd Router? |
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marcw
join:2001-05-18
Saint Paul, MN | said by adsldude:
Here's another link that goes through the 5660 PPTP Relay basics:
»Efficient Networks Forum FAQ »On PPPoA how do I Bridge a 5660 to get the Public IP to my PC or 2nd Router?
For Windows users, I think those instructions would also work quite similarly for the Speedtouch. It would be *very* interesting to know if the Actiontec could also use tunneling to attain the real address. That's not something I'll be experimenting with any time soon considering I don't even have an Actiontec any more. Boy, am I glad I rented for a month instead of purchasing. |
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| I don't think the Actiontec supports PPTP Relay (which is different than PPTP pass-through), so this mechanism is not going to work with the Actiontec. |
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marcw
join:2001-05-18
Saint Paul, MN | said by bigjoesmith:
I don't think the Actiontec supports PPTP Relay (which is different than PPTP pass-through), so this mechanism is not going to work with the Actiontec.
You're probably right. I was just recalling how much pptp info was included in the Actiontec CLI manual and was wondering if there wouldn't be a way to make it work, the eternal tinkerer that I am. But it doesn't matter to me anyway since I'm out of the Actiontec loop now. |
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