[CentOS] Newbie ADSL configuration, ppp0 can't activate &

[Walt Reed]

On Sat, Jul 14, 2007 at 10:34:01AM -0400, mailing-lists at computer2.com said:
> >Message: 23
> >Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 22:11:59 -0400
> >From: Dan Halbert <halbert at everyzing.com>
> >Subject: Re: [CentOS] Newbie ADSL configuration, ppp0 can't activate &
> >        config        not found
> >To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> >Message-ID: <469830EF.3080601 at everyzing.com>
> 
> mailing-lists at computer2.com wrote:
> <snip>
> 
> If you have a router, then the ADSL connection you have is handled by
> the router, and is invisible to you, on the LAN side of the router. The
> router could be connecting to the WAN via a piece of wet string, as far
> as you care. So you should just have eth0 do DHCP and leave it connected
> to the router. You'll get an address like 192.168.1.2 from the router.
> You don't need ppp0 at all; to Centos the router appears like a LAN that
> routes to the Internet.
> 
> In Windows, do "ipconfig" in a Command window, and you'll see what I
> mean. You should see something similar with ifconfig in Centos.
> 
> Dan: Thank you for replying! I will try what you suggested, ASAP. Yesterday
> was Friday the 13th.... I need to get this working, before I try to get my
> Firewall/Router working!  Lanny


Some pain-in-the-ass ISP's force you to do PPPoE instead of DHCP. Some
give you a DSL modem that does NAT and the PPPoE stuff for you, some
don't. If you have one that doesn't, a cheap Linksys "router" can do the
NAT and PPPoE for you if you don't fee comfortable doing it in Linux.

I prefer to to use a Sangoma S518 ADSL PCI card for $120US and do
everything on the Linux side. Fortunately, I have a static and not
dynamic address, but the majority is the same. The big advantage is that
I can do traffic shaping / QoS without dealing with massive modem
buffers which can totally screw that up. It's good enough that I can run
torrents, interactive ssh sessions, and VoIP calls all at the same time
on a 1.5/384 DSL connection.

While this doesn't fix your problem, it's food for thought.