Re: Wierd PPP Problems
On Wed, 12 May 1999, Wayne Topa wrote:
> Quoting John Hasler(john@dhh.gt.org):
> > Chris Hoover writes:
> > > I'm having some strange problems with ppp on my dial out server.
> > > Everything has been working fine for quite some time (over 51 days of
> > > uptime on 2.2.2), and then tonight I started having problems connecting.
> > > Does anyone know what is going on, and how to fix it?
> > At a guess, your ISP changed something. Does it fail every time, or
> > intermittently? What sort of authentication are you using? What does your
> > chat script look like?
> John is right, its your ISP. I used to have a problem like that with
> Netcom, twice a year. Their Support group kept telling me I was doing
> something wrong. My 'fix' for 2 years was to put my ppp-on into a
> 'Netcom' script that repeated the ppp-on attempts. It would take
> anywhere from 1 to 12 attempts before I got connected. The problem
> would last for a week or two and then, after they got so many
> complaints, they would fix it.
Speaking as the owner of an ISP that has fielded his share of such
complaints: Assuming that your ISP is using remote access servers, what
you describe is a classic symptom of a telephone trunking problem.
Either a port card has gone bad and you're getting controlled clock slips
or you're signal is going through an old 1A switch that needs maintenance.
In either case, it has nothing to do with the ISP (although it also has
nothing to do with your system, either.) You should feel lucky that they
get fixed after a couple of weeks, for SWBT hasn't to my knowledge EVER
fixed a trunking problem in Houston. They certainly have never fixed one
that we attempted to report.
If the authentication server fails, NOBODY is able to log in and that gets
your attention real quick. Usually, it takes about 20 minutes to fix,
most of that being the time it takes to get a hold of someone who has
root-level access and an understanding of what needs to be done. If
there's something wierd about your setup, then it won't ever connect at
all no matter how many times you retry.
The original poster should contact his ISP (CALL THEM! nothing frustrates
us faster than getting an email that talks about problems connecting
except for the emails we get that talk about problems getting email) and
see what the failures look like from their end. This works best if you
can call the dial-in number and talk to support simultaneously. If he
can't do that, then he's got the wrong Internet provider. If the modem is
an internal modem, he should be prepared to power-cycle his computer
because some modems don't like long uptimes. (It's a lot easier to
powercycle external modems, which is one reason I recommend them.)
Of course, I have no way of knowing if Mr. Hoover did this, but asking on
this list about ISP connection difficulties without consulting the ISP
first is probably not the best way to go. A critical piece of the puzzle
is WHY the connection failed and for that information you'll need to go to
the other end.
--
Jonathan Guthrie (jguthrie@brokersys.com)
Brokersys +281-895-8101 http://www.brokersys.com/
12703 Veterans Memorial #106, Houston, TX 77014, USA
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