[Gllug] BT ADSL and USB

[Richard Cohen]

On 10 Jul 2001, Dave Cridland wrote:

> On 09 Jul 2001 20:43:48 +0100, Richard Cohen wrote:
> > On Mon, 9 Jul 2001, Axel Segebrecht wrote:
> > > 1.) does the supplied usb modem work on linux (md7.2)?
> >
> > Yes.  Use the Benoit driver from
> > http://benoit.papillault.free.fr/speedtouch/index.en.html
>
> Does this driver work better than the Alcatel driver for 2.4?
> Does this require a 2.4 kernel? Because I don't think that Mandrake < 8
> comes with 2.4.x, does it?

I don't use vendor kernels, and frankly, limiting your hardware or driver
availability depending on which kernel your vendor has provided seems to go
against the point of Linux.

>From the Benoit driver FAQ:
7. What kernel version is known to work?

kernel 2.2.17, 2.2.17-21mdk
& kernel 2.4.0, 2.4.2, 2.4.3, 2.4.4
are OK

kernel older than 2.2.17 does not work
kernel 2.4.1 freeze.

And from me:
2.4.5 works fine

> The alternative is to read through the pretty damn good documentation
> on:
> http://www.linuxdude.co.uk/docs/Alcatel-Speedtouch-USB-mini-HOWTO/speedtouchusb.html
>
> This covers getting software, patching kernels, and suchlike, and I've
> never had a problem getting things to work even while really quite
> hungover. :-)

I initially followed this route, and it was, frankly, a (K)nightmare.  I
like compiling from source, which made it pretty hard to build parts of this
solution, and even when I'd got it working, I never made more than about 17
hours of uptime before the line dropped, often taking the machine with it.
I changed to the Benoit drivers (which required no patching of anything and
doesn't force me to run closed-source, vendor-(un)supported code as root)
around 5 weeks ago, and since then I've had two lines drops (each after over
2 weeks of uptime), and even then, I only had to re-run pppd to bring the
line back up.  I suspect (although I haven't proved it yet) that putting
persist in the pppd options would mean it would bring the line up by itself.

Both drivers were running on exactly the same hardware, so it must have
been a software fault which made it unusably unstable.

>

[snip good advice on connecting a network over ADSL]

> Dave.

Cheers
Richard


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