Dial up networking procedure for our house
This web page has information on how to build a network connection to the
Internet from any computer in our house. It discusses how to break
the connection when done, and how to test that the connection is in place.
The advantage of a shared network is that it eliminates contention
for the phone line. Several people at several machines may access
the network simultaneous. True, performance suffers, but most users
feel that degraded performance is better than getting completely locked
out.
In this essay, text written in fixed width type is a computer
conversation. What you type is underlined.
Where you have to substitute something, that is written in italics.
Procedures
Setup a connection
To start the connection, login to the ppp account. There is no password.
If you are in the root account, then use the script /etc/ppp/ppp-on to
start the network connection. It generally takes about 10 to 30 seconds
to dial the number, answer the phone, establish the carriers, and negotiate
the ppp protocol. So wait about 30 seconds and then test the connection
as shown below. If the connection doesn't get estbalished the first
time, then try again. If the connection just won't setup, then look
at the file /var/log/messages for more and possibly helpful information.
Check on the connection
To check on the connection status, use the ifconfig command with
no arguments. If it shows the ppp0 connection, then the
internet connection is up.
[root@angel /root]# ifconfig
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1
Bcast:127.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP BROADCAST
LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3584 Metric:1
RX packets:23784
errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
TX packets:23784
errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr
00:60:67:2D:4F:48
inet addr:192.168.2.1
Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST
RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:655013
errors:0 dropped:10 overruns:0
TX packets:670040
errors:23 dropped:0 overruns:0
Interrupt:11
Base address:0x6000
ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point
Protocol
inet
addr:209.43.128.202 P-t-P:198.68.188.67 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP POINTOPOINT
RUNNING MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:4757
errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
TX packets:4501
errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
[root@angel /root]#
Stop the connection
To stop the connection, either in the root or ppp accounts run the
/etc/ppp/ppp-off script. However, it is recomended that you not bother-
if the link is inactive for 10 minutes, it will drop automatically.
Not stopping the connection is safer for other potential users.
Background information
Our network is logically a bus style network but physically it is a tree.
<------*----------*-----------*----------*--------------*-------->
|
| |
|
|
PC
PC PC
PC
PC w/Linux<-->modem-----> the internet
In our network, the bus (the long horizontal line) is actually inside
the hub, and the short vertical lines are the wires leading to the computers.
Network resources at our house
| Computer |
IP address |
Ethernet Address |
| Jeff's Linux 486 "Angel" |
192.168.2.1 |
00-60-67-2d-4f-48 |
| Jeff's Windows/95 "Doom" |
192.168.2.2 |
00:60:8C:66:C5:3D |
| Daniels' Pentium "portal" |
192.168.2.3 |
00-a0-24-1d-c4-77 |
| Sarah's Pentium "rex" |
192.168.2.4 |
|
| Chris's Pentium "Pathfinder" |
192.168.2.5 |
00:60:67:2D:4F:35 |