* * * * *
                                        
                             More tunneling issues
                                        
At the end of January, I called out to the Lazy Web [1] for advice on how to
get a Cisco 2611 to authenticate a PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over
Ethernet) connection and well, it's finally working (with no input from said
Lazy Web [2]):

> interface ATM0/0
>  description XXXXXXXXXX Secondary Internet Connection
>  no ip address
>  no atm ilmi-keepalive
>  pvc 6/42
>   encapsulation aal5snap
>   protocol ppp dialer
>   dialer pool-member 1
>  !
>  dsl operating-mode auto
> !
> interface Dialer0
>  description Authentication Happens Here
>  ip address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX 255.255.255.0
>  encapsulation ppp
>  dialer pool 1
>  dialer-group 1
>  ppp chap hostname XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
>  ppp chap password 7 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> !
> dialer-list 1 protocol ip permit
> 

But I do have to admit some confusion over why it suddenly started working. I
had this configuration pretty much in place by the end of January but I just
couldn't even see the customer's router by DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)
(which, as you can see there, is a backup connection in case their router's
primary connection goes down [3]). It's hard to debug this since you don't
even see the traffic unless you pass an authencation request through the
physical lines owned by The Monopolistic Phone Company, and because the
radius authentication server wasn't getting any requests, that meant that our
Cisco router wasn't seeing any DSL traffic from the customer.

Very annoying.

Then earlier this week **BAM** traffic suddenly was getting through. It's
almost as if The Monopolistic Phone Company took their own sweet time in
actually enabling the DSL circuit on our customer's phone line.

Good thing too, since their current provider is having issues with
connectivity (and twice this week I've had to reprogram their router's
primary IP (Internet Protocol) address). Now the issue is why the router is
prefering the DSL connection over their primary connection (which is the
exact opposite of what is supposed to happen).

Update on March 2^nd, 2006

I found out why why the DSL was being prefered over the Ethernet connection
[4].


[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/01/30.1
[2] http://www.lazyweb.org/
[3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/01/28.1
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/03/02.2

Email author at sean@conman.org

.