I have both an email and webserver, and we recently changed from QWEST dsl to AT&T dsl. Unfortunately they gave me a modem rather than a DSL router, and my ip address is changing every couple of minutes.

Which totally screws up my service since it takes up to 10 minutes for easydns.com to update my ipaddress.

With QWEST dsl I still had a dynamic ip address but my ip changed once a week or less.

Needless to say it renders my email server and webserver completely useless outside my internal network. Here is my ifcfg-ppp0 file

USERCTL=no
BOOTPROTO=dialup
NAME=DSLpp0
DEVICE=ppp0
TYPE-xDSL
ONBOOT=yes
DEMAND=no
PIDFILE=/var/run/pppoe-adsl.pid
FIREWALL=MASQUERADE
PING=.
PPPOE_TIMEOUT=20
LCP_FAILURE=3
LCP_INTERVAL=80
CLAMPMSS=1412
CONNECT_POLL=6
CONNECT_TIMEOUT=60
DEFROUTE=yes
SYNCRONOUS=no
ETH=eth0
PROVIDER=DSLppp0
USER=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@worldnet.att.net
PEERDNS=no

Of course the USER= says something else, but thats not important.

Is there anything I can change here to force my connection to stay up constantly so that my ip address does not change?

I used the adsl-setup to setup things initially. It asked me if I wanted on demand connection and I said no, but when I checked the status of my pppoe using the command adsl-status /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0 it gave me a warning saying the information might not be accurate because I was running on demand. So in searching for similar problems someone mentioned putting in DEMAND=no in my ifcfg-ppp0 file and that got rid of that warning.

However whenever my ipaddress changes it says my link is down when I use the adsl-status command until I try to access the web.

I have redhat 9.0 and am using the PPPoE version 3.5.2 that came with it. (rp-pppoe-3.5-2.i386.rpm)

In summary, I think the problem is it is not keeping the connection up when my linux box does not try to access the internet constantly. I'd really rather not flood a site constantly trying to ping it just to keep my connection up to prevent my internet connection from dropping.

Thank you. I am wondering if this should go in the networking section instead of the newbie section, but I still feel like a newbie (only been working on Linux for a year and a half now in my spare time for fun.) With full time work and full-time college, that doesn't give me too much experience.

Yeah, definitely networking...
Moving in 5 . 4 . 3 . 2 ...



Ok, so any chance you can buy a 40 dollar router to see if that'll keep the thing up? I've had HUGE luck with mine. Been at least 6 months (now watch me get all jacked up ) since I've had an IP change (DHCP though.. and through Verizon..).

If you want suggestions on routers, I've had an awesome time with the Linksys BEFSR41, and I got it free from my mom for christmas (what a nice lady eh? ). However, they are running cheap now, like 40 bux a pop in some places (check pricewatch.com and shopping.yahoo.com for some price checks).

Cool

With Qwest we had a Cysco675 modem/router, maybe I can configure it to work with AT&Ts service. Just need to know if it is capable of connecting with PPPoE. Hmm... going to tryin this now.. however if anyone has any ideas of how I can change my configuration to stay up constantly I would be happy to know. Thanks.

Here's another idea while you wait for a good one

Hop on a filesharing system. Something like http://gift.sf.net where you can regulate the speed of up/down easily and set it to something real low. Then download something huge from someone, or just connect to people who never really share. The software will constantly try to connect but because you've got it set so low that it really doesn't matter. You will have an active connection, and will get bumped less often at least, and not notice a drop in bandwidth because you have set the speeds un-tolerably low.



Cool

That sounds like a good idea. I might end up on doing that if I can't get the cysco675 modem/router to work. I currently am trying to get all the information I need from AT&T's technical support to configure it.

I need to know:
if they are offering DAT or CAP modulation
Alcatel compliant or a Cisco Systems DSLAM or other
What VPI/VCI pairs they are using.

I bet the tech support guy doesn't know but heres hoping.

Yes! figured it out. Got it all working now.

Problem was not with any of my configuration files. It was with Redhat's distribution of the rp-pppoe package. Redhat's package version number was "rp-pppoe-3.5-2.src.rpm" Roaring Penguin's latest version is: "rp-pppoe-3.5-1.src.rpm".

When I read the documentation yet again I caught something just barely under the Roaring Penguin's How-To link.

"I have had many reports of broken rp-pppoe packages in various Linux distributions. Specifically, Red Hat distributes a particularly butchered version of rp-pppoe which is very difficult to use without graphical tools. This is really bad; you must have a way to set up networking without using GUI configuration tools. I don't mean to disparage Red Hat (I use it myself), but they really should not have modified rp-pppoe in the way they did."

So I downloaded Roaring Penguin's package. And did a rpm with --oldpackage. The configuration files were placed in different locations. But I was able to get everything working. Redhat appears to have screwed up the rp-pppoe when you try to maintain a constant connection.

The only minor problem I have now is when I do a "service network restart" it doesn't stop and restart my adsl service, like it use to when I was using redhat's version. So whenever I need to do that I have to also do a "adsl-stop" and "adsl-start" and it works again.

I hope this might help others, I have been pulling hair over it.

Though I agree that RH has garped seriously up pppoe I do not agree that was your problem. You could have solved it by changing

PPPOE_TIMEOUT=20

to

PPPOE_TIMEOUT=0

in your config file

Now if I can only figure out why pppd doesn't seem to call /etc/ip-up and make it so it does I'll be happy