Fedora dial-up connection
 

I have been using Fedora Core 1 with an external Creative Labs v.92 ModemBlaster for a few weeks now and it works, it seems, when it wants to work. It always dials and connects, but doesn't always do anything else.

Sometimes when I connect and start Firefox and go to a Web address it just sits there saying "Resolving host any_site_i_try.com" then times out. Evolution and Pan (or any other Internet app I try) also time out, like I'm not even connected, yet my modem lights are all active saying I am connected.

Like I said, when it works it works fine. It always dials, always goes through the squealing mating call and connects, but most of the time I have to hang up and reconnect 3 or 4 times for it to actually pull up web pages and work with email before timing out. The third or fourth reconnect always seems to work.

Does this sound like an ISP problem or I am missing some newbie settings on my end? I've run the configuration editor and kernel tuning apps on Fedora and seen many settings for networking and TCP/IP timeout setting, but being a newbie I didn't want to mess with any of these settings.

"Sometimes when I connect and start Firefox and go to a Web address it just sits there saying "Resolving host any_site_i_try.com" then times out. Evolution and Pan (or any other Internet app I try) also time out, like I'm not even connected, yet my modem lights are all active saying I am connected."

This may be a problem with resolving domain names, although I have never heard of a problem in resolving domain names that was an intermittent problem. Most ISP resolve names on the same server that you dial into. Some use a different server than the one you dial into to resolve names. Maybe in the case of your ISP sometimes the server you dial into is the one resolving domain names and sometimes it isn't. So if domain name resolution is your problem then this is how you solve it:

During the setup for the Internet you have to give Fedora the domain name for your Domain Name Server in both letter and number format. Then Fedora will set up /etc/resolv.conf to look something like the following:
search auth.myisp.net
nameserver 198.46.103.7

So, call your ISP and ask for the DNS in both name and number format. Then enter that into /etc/resolv.conf

Do not be confused by the fact that when you dial into your ISP your dial out program (kppp?) will place the name of the server that you dialed into in /etc/resolv.conf and will take it out again when you disconnect. It doesn't hurt anything to do it both by hand and automatically by kppp. It also doesn't hurt anything if you have more than one entry in /etc/resolv.conf just as long as one of them is correct for the current session.

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Steve Stites