How to Setup your DSL PPPoE Connection

To get pppoe running, you will need to fill in at least the three following
pieces of information:

a) your user name (given to you by your DSL provider)
b) your password
c) the Ethernet interface your DSL modem is connected (if you have more
than one Ethernet card)

To do this, follow the following steps while logged in as root:

1. Edit the file /etc/ppp/pap-secrets file, adding a line to the outbound
connections sections that has the following format:

username@sympatico.ca	  sympatico.ca	    password

Replace "username" by the username your DSL provider gave you and "password"
by your password. This assumes that your provider is Sympatico. If it is
not, you will also need to replace 'sympatico.ca' by the address of your
provider. (T-DSL users from Germany may want to have a look at the end of
this file for hints on figuring out the username that ppp needs.)

2. In the file /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider, uncomment and edit the "user" line.
Using our example of "username@sympatico.ca" the line should then look like
this:

user username@sympatico.ca

with what follows 'user' being identical to the first part of the line you
added to pap-secrets.

3. If you have more than one Ethernet card in your computer, replace the
"eth0" in the /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider file by the interface your DSL
modem is plugged in.

4. Now, to bring your connection up, do one of the following:

 a) If you want your connection to come up automatically (either for an
 always-on connection or if you are using demand-dialing), add the following
 to /etc/network/interfaces:

   auto myisp
   iface myisp inet ppp
           provider dsl-provider

 To start your pppoe connection, execute "ifup myisp". The connection will 
 also come up automatically the next time you boot.

 (Note that for demand-dialing, you will need to edit the
 /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider file and uncomment the lines in section 2.)

 b) If you want to bring your connection up manually (because your DSL
 provider charges per minute connected), simply type "pon dsl-provider" to
 bring the connection up and "poff" to bring it down.

In both cases, running the "plog" command, you should see in one of the
lines something line "pppd[216]: Connect: ppp0 <--> eth0". which means that
the connection came up successfully.

------

		     User-Contributed Hints and Tips

- The following kernel options needs to be enabled to run pppoe:
  CONFIG_PPP, CONFIG_PPP_ASYNC.

- The Debian pppoe program is patched to automatically bring up the
  Ethernet interface.

- If the connection comes up without problems (i.e. no ppp errors show
  up when you execute the "plog" command) but no data can be send or
  received, check using the "route" command if there is another default
  route (aka gateway) when you start the connection. If so try deleting this
  route, by removing the corresponding "gateway" line in the
  /etc/network/interfaces file.
  You may find useful the replacedefaultroute pppd keyword.

- If the usepeerdns keyword is used in /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider,
  once the connection is up the default pppd configuration will
  automatically update /etc/resolv.conf with the name server addresses
  provided by your ISP.

- If your machine is a gateway for a LAN, the clients may have problems
  connecting to some sites. To avoid this problem, you need to clamp MSS
  size, using the "-m" option of pppoe. Example lines doing this are provided
  in the /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider file supplied with this package.

- German T-DSL user may find the following example useful in figuring out
  the correct user name for ppp. (Taken from
  http://www.adsl4linux.de/software/tonline_rp-pppoe.html)

   _________________________________________________________
  /                                                         \
  | Anschlusskennung: 11111111111                            |
  | T-Onlinenummer: 222222222222                             |
  | Mitbenutzer: 0001                                        |
  | Passwort: geHeim                                         |
  |                                                          |
  | Listing 1: /etc/ppp/pap-secrets                          |
  |                                                          |
  | # Secrets for authentication using PAP                   |
  | # client      server      secret      IP addresses       |
  |                                                          |
  | "111111111111222222222222#0001@t-online.de"  *  "geHeim" |
  \_________________________________________________________/

  Due to the presence of a "#" character in the username, the username will
  need quoting in the dsl-provider file, like this:

    user "111111111111222222222222#0001@t-online.de"

- RFC 2516 paragraph 7 mandates that the following options MUST NOT be
  requested and MUST be rejected if requested by the peer:
   - Field Check Sequence (FCS) Alternatives
   - Address-and-Control-Field-Compression (ACFC)
   - Asynchronous-Control-Character-Map (ACCM)
  The first option is not implemented by pppd, the others are disabled with
  the keywords noaccomp and default-asyncmap in /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider.
  Removing them (especially default-asyncmap) may break your connection.
  The use of default-asyncmap will not cause a connection slowdown because
  even if the default asyncmap is FFFFFFFF, it can be used only with ttys.


 -- Christian Hudon <chrish@debian.org>, Tue Sep 16 14:08:08 2003