[Gllug] Alcatel Speedtouch Simply Rules!

[Peter Joanes]

Hi Henry,

On Monday 14 November 2005 11:36, Henry Gilbert wrote:
> I stood shocked that after just 10 minutes or downloading/extracting
> and ppp confinging via the script ..
> the same Speedtouch script smiles and says:
> "I can see the Net from here ..."

I'm glad to see you had no problems getting it working, so I'll go into a 
little more detail on the subject:
There are two different approaches to using Speedtouch modems on Linux, and I 
think that (from script you ran) you are using the user space tools. I prefer 
the other way which is the modern kernel driver (there was also an older 
kernel driver that mostly used the user space tools).
The user space tools require a modem management daemon (called modem_run) 
which uploads the firmware and communicates with the device over the kernel's 
usb layer. The kernel driver uses the hotplug api to upload the modem's 
firmware as soon as it is plugged in, and only requires pppd to be running 
for the connection to function.

Here's how I have my Speedtouch (a purple 330, i.e. version 2.00) configured 
on Gentoo:
!) I used the firmware extractor from the kernel driver homepage 
(http://www.linux-usb.org/SpeedTouch) and put the firmware files in the place 
that hotplug will look for them (/lib/firmware on my system).
2) I put a ppp configuration file called 'adsl' in /etc/ppp/peers, and a 
corresponding username/password pair in /etc/ppp/chap-secrets.
At this point, I can start the connection by running
	modprobe ohci_hcd	(this loads usb support and detects devices, so it will 
also load speedtch, which will transfer the firmware to the modem and 
synchronize the line. Some machines use uhci_hcd)
	pppd call adsl		(this will start the connection to the ISP)

3) To have the connection start on bootup I added 'ohci_hcd' 
to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 and (totally Gentoo specific:) there is 
a generic ppp connection startup script called /etc/init.d/net.ppp0, so I 
configured it to use my new connection by adding PEER="adsl" 
in /etc/conf.d/net.ppp0.

As I've said before, my Speedtouch is quite reliable and when my connection 
drops there is usually also a note about it on my ISP's status page :-)
I can power-cycle it however by killing pppd and unloading and reloading the 
usb modules (speedtch and ohci_hcd).

Some things to note: For the above to work, your kernel must have various bits 
in it (modules: pppoatm, usb_atm, br2684, atm, speedtch, firmware_class). 
Also your pppd must have been compiled with pppoatm support (I have a ppp 
plugin file 'pppoatm.so' in /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.3/).

Cheers,

-	Pete.
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