pppd problem

[Michael Mather <mmather@eol.ca>]

I had a similar problem to that archived at:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-user-200303/msg00256.html

but with an extra twist.

I was trying to use  pon  and  poff  to access my ISP by dial-up modem.
This was on Debian 3.0r1, newly installed on a PC, and using  pppconfig
to set up  ppp  with dynamic DNS.

I would say:

pon

and get the reply:

PPP: version 2.3.7 (demand dialling)
PPP: line discipline registered
registered device ppp0

At this stage, Konqueror would sit for 40 seconds and then say that the
site was not found.

Then I would say:
poff

Now, if I requested a site in Konqueror, the modem would dial again and
this time the site would be found properly!

As suggested in the archive, I removed diald, and everything seems to
work properly now. (After struggling for many days.)

Questions:

(1) Why did it work properly when it dialed for itself?
(2) Should this be reported as a bug?

Note: If I remember correctly, tasksel actually asks if you want diald.
For a beginner like me, it looks necessary.