From owner-freebsd-isdn Mon May 24 15:46:20 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-isdn@freebsd.org Received: from queasy.outpost.co.nz (outpost2.inspire.net.nz [203.96.157.26]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 1721B14CF9 for ; Mon, 24 May 1999 15:46:06 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from crh@outpost.co.nz) Received: (qmail 5759 invoked from network); 24 May 1999 22:46:03 -0000 Received: from officedonkey.outpost.co.nz (HELO officedonkey) (192.168.1.3) by outpost2.inspire.net.nz with SMTP; 24 May 1999 22:46:03 -0000 Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "Craig Harding" Organization: Outpost Digital Media Ltd To: freebsd-isdn@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 10:45:44 +1200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: ISDN Terminal adapter no work Reply-To: crh@outpost.co.nz References: Bart van Leeuwen's message of "Mon, 24 May 1999 19:01:06 +0200 (CEST)" In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.52) Message-Id: <19990524224615.1721B14CF9@hub.freebsd.org> Sender: owner-freebsd-isdn@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote: > There was never talk of using two 33k6 modems instead of an ISDN > line. Somebody claimed that an ISDN TA was a "very fast modem", to > which I replied that the difference was not large enough to warrant > the use of the word "very". I'm that someone, and although it seems a pointless semantic argument, I would think 128k is "very" much faster than 56k (the fastest available modem speed at present) and 128k is what my TA runs at. What I was actually trying to say in my original message (and which I thought was reasonably clear) is not that ISDN TA's are necessarily very fast, just that to use one on a FreeBSD box you merely have to think of it as a modem, albeit one that's faster than a normal analog modem. The Zyxel Omninet I have only has a single serial port to the DTE so the comparison seems valid. The other point I made, which I'll reiterate here for the benefit of other people new to ISDN and Terminal Adaptors and the like (as I was 3 weeks ago) is that (and this only applies for certain to the Zyxel Omninet but I believe is true in the general case) to use the multi-link PPP modes of the TA, you don't have to do anything special to talk to it from a FreeBSD box. I use usermode PPP, and to enable both B channels on the TA to my ISP I merely use the normal AT command setup in PPP's config files to enable multi-link PPP inside the Terminal Adaptor. Apart from that, PPP is configured to talk to the ISP as if the Terminal Adaptor is a normal modem, and the Terminal Adaptor internally performs some kind of transparent single-link PPP to multilink PPP translation that makes everything Just Work. The Zyxel supports V.120 channel bonding as well, but my ISP doesn't. I really wanted to explain all this here so that it'll get into the list archives so the next person in my position trying to get a handle on these terminal adaptors and their multi-link PPP capabilities won't be as flummoxed as I was. An additional tip - definitely enable LQR monitoring as the ISDN line can disconnect without the TA bothering to tell the FreeBSD box about it. -- C. -- Craig Harding Head of Postproduction, Outpost Digital Media Ltd "I don't know about God, I just think we're handmade" - Polly To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isdn" in the body of the message