On Fri, 2006-05-05 at 13:48 -0400, Bill Strosberg wrote: > Fred Williams wrote: > > Many thanks to all who helped, especially Bill who came over and > > arrived 5 minutes after it started working. Nevertheless, it was a good > > visit. It is up and working now, with just ordinary problems on the > > Usenet, (new ones, but I can straighten that out with my ISP). > > The major thing I did that fixed it was I threatened to return > > everything to my ISP and demand a refund. Suddenly things started > > working. (:-|) Stay away from MyCybernet.net. They have cause days of > > headaches for me. > > > > > Fred: > > You are very welcome. This is how community is supposed to work. > > For posterity, I'll outline the issues and their resolution so others > can avoid the same frustration. > > 1) This particular ISP has a policy that there may NOT be simultaneous > authenticated dial-up and DSL connections. I would imagine that their > dial up and DSL services are using the same Radius server for > authentication, and the policy is enforced that there is only one > connection allowed live per user. This would be an expected standard > practice, so others should remember this. Even that could have been no problem *if* they had told me about it. When an ISP says they don't support Linux, then you figure OK I've paid for the service and I don't need to call them before I try to log on,... because they're no help when I do call them anyway. > 2) Fred's problems were occurring because he was connected via dial-up > for email and surfing, while attempting to login via DSL concurrently. > There were no doubt other problems along the way. One loose wire, which I discovered a couple of days ago. > How could this have been diagnosed? > > 1) Sniffing the eth0 interface with Ethereal (or whatever) would have > seen the rejected Radius authentication attempt, and would also have > shown the DSL connection working at the data link layer. > 2) The ISP should have been able to retrieve the failed repeated login > attempts from the Radius server's logs - it is surprising to me they > didn't at least trigger a security event, given the multiple day > timespan and the policies in place. > I should probably try to familiarize myself with Ethereal. After all, it's installed. > In this ISP's defense, very few other ISP's have adequate Linux > knowledge or could diagnose things in a cost-effective fashion. These > guys aren't making lots of money and they have to focus on serving the > many running Windows versus the few and proud running Linux. If you > want a quality ISP that can support Linux, the BSDs etc., Magma does, > but you pay a premium for premium quality staff. > > Other thoughts ... > During the effort I spoke with SSI Internet Inc. here in Ottawa. Their fellow, Rob, was very helpful and while they don't officially support Linux, they have, according to Rob, several people there who use Linux themselves and are fairly knowledgeable. They gave me the impression that they would bend over backwards and stay with me until I was connected if I was their client. This is exactly the impression that I don't get from my current ISP. > Opening my laptop immediately got a good quality 802.11g connection at > very solid connection stats in your computer room. As I demonstrated, > there was a wide open access point available with not even weak WEP > encryption in place. Got to love free high speed Internet access. No comment! (;-)). -- Regards, Fred Williams <unclefred [ at ] fredwilliams [ dot ] ca> <http://www.fredwilliams.ca>