ppp, pmcia and isdn question

["Ulrike Schmidt" <ulrike@example.com>]

I am trying to connect to my ISP from my notebook running debian potato with two methods: pcmcia-modem (USRobotics, Megahertz 33.6) and isdn (NEC Aterm IT55DSU). If possible I would like to be able to use both.

 

I first tried to get the pcmcia-modem working. Cardinfo says "Serial or Modem", dev "ttyS2", but when I used pppconfig and had it autodetect the modem it did not find it, so entered ttyS2 by hand. I also used PAP, although I don't know whether this is correct. Anyway, somehow I cannot get a connection. I read something about pppd and debug, but "pppd debug" says "The remote system is required to authenticate itself but I couldn't find any suitable secret (password) for it to use to do so. (None of the available passwords would let it use an IP adress.)" I did not quite understand this message and I guess I also did not get the syntax right (just tried "pppd -debug" but it does not recognize the option).

 

Anyway, I gave up on this one for the moment and tried my luck with isdn. pppconfig detects the ISDN adaptor, and when I run pon there seems to be some communication, lights blink, but after a while the connection terminates. I tried PAP and Chat and CHAP and everything is the same.

 

I got doubts that I can just pretend the ISDN adaptor is a modem, although I thought I remembered someone saying so on tlug, so I searched the archives, but got too many or not the right hits. In some ISDN docs I then saw that Terminal Adaptors are to be treated different from ISDN cards, e.g.: "However, isdn4linux can not make use of any devices connected via a serial or parallel interface (which are called 'terminal adaptors'), ..." and the HOWTO.isdnutils also spoke about cards, so I thought now I better ask first on this list:

 

If cardinfo detects the pcmcia-card as a modem, why doesn't pppconfig?

Can I treat the ISDN adapter just like a modem without installing anything else?

Should I use PAP, Chat or CHAP?

How can I find out where the problem lies with failing connections? plog printed out a lot of strange strings will the lights were blinking but not much informative information about why the connection failed in the end.

 

Best, Uli