Babybell.net DSL Episode IV: A New Opening Crawl

The BBQ Pit
1

Babybell.net DSL Episode IV: A New Opening Crawl

It’s been a long time since I had to waste a couple of days on the Verizon DSL tech support line…

The Thrills of BabyBell.net DSL Setup, June 2000

The Thrills of BabyBell.net DSL Setup: The Sequel, June 2001

Babybell.net DSL III: SMTP Harder, August 2001

… so obviously I was due. Because in the world of Verizon DSL, nothing works the same way forever, and sooner or later you have to talk to… TECH SUPPORT! :eek:

Uptown, in my development studio, I have a setup essentially identical to the one described in the first thread linked above, except instead of me & my girlfriend being the two concurrently-online computers, it’s my development server box and my laptop (when I’m up there to work), plus a WiFi unit, Apple’s Airport Express Base Station, for when I want to work out on the patio.

DSL Modem has a hub plugged into it and out the other end of that device multiple computers are plugged, each of them making their own independent PPPoE connection, each of them obtaining their own unique IP address. So when I’m up there I can work from my laptop while the little server keeps on ticking, and when I go home I can access the server from home because its IP address is a public IP address.

Until the day before yesterday, all was well, but then one of my clients, whose database was still under development and therefore hosted on my development server, calls to say they can’t get into the database.

I get to the office and find the server is running but the PPPoE connection’s status is “disconnected”. (Which is unusual because it is set up to attempt a reconnect until successful). Manual connect doesn’t work. I futz around and try different things and after 30 minutes or so establish that:

• any of the 3 devices (laptop, server, Airport Express Base Station) can make a PPPoE connection, but only the first one to make the attempt can do so.

• it’s not the cables; I move cables around, all cables are capable of establishing & sustaining that first connection.

Hmm, so either the hub is dead or verizon had done something to change how my connection works. Hub seems unlikely but I swap it out for an older device. For the heck of it I also locate an older DSL modem and try all combos. Nope, no difference. I call Verizon.
Automated: Hello and welcome to Verizon. Please make your choice from the following menu and please listen closely because our options have changed. Press 1 if you wish to order new service. Press 2 if you are unable to get online. Press 3 if you are having problems with email. Press 4 to repeat these options.

AHunter3: Customer service, please

Automated: I’m sorry I did not underst

AHunter3: Customer service please

Automated: I’m sorry I did not unders

AHunter3: I know you didn’t. Live person, please! NOW!

Automated: You’ll be sorry. OK I will find someone who breathes oxygen, who will listen to you and fail to understand you any better than the machine, please hold…

O2 Breather: Hello and welcome to Verizon. May I have the phone number you’re calling about?

AHunter3: 212-555-1212

O2 Breather: And am I speaking with AHunter3?

AHunter3: Yes that’s me

O2 Breather: And how can I help you today?

AHunter3: Well, up until yesterday, I had a setup that was working fine. I have two computers, both of them plugged into a hub, and the hub in turn is plugged into the DSL modem. And both of the computers were concurrently able to make a PPPoE connection. But as of yesterday only one computer will do so. It can be EITHER computer, but whichever one makes the connection first gets online; the second one displays an error message “No PPPoE Server could be found”.

O2 Breather: So your problem is that you can’t get either computer online?

AHunter3: No, I just told you, I can, repeat can get either computer online, but then the second one can’t make the connection any more.

O2 Breather: So your computer is plugged into the DSL modem?

AHunter3: No, the computer is plugged into the hub, into one of the “line out” ports. There is another ethernet cable that goes from the hub’s “line in” port to the DSL modem, and a third ethernet cable that goes from a different “line out” port to the second computer.

O2 Breather: Are you using a wireless router?

AHunter3: Not at the moment. I’ve occasionally hooked an Apple Express Base Station up as a third device, and it, too, makes a PPPoE connection and then shares that connection out over the private wireless network it creates.

O2 Breather: So your wireless router is how you were sharing your connection to a second computer?

AHunter3: No, the two computers were connecting via PPPoE, as I said. The Airport Base Station is sort of irrelevant except that it, too, makes that type of connection to get itself online. It’s not particularly important, I don’t use it very often anyway.

O2 Breather: So you just need to get one computer online, then?

AHunter3: NO, no, I already CAN get ONE computer online. I need to get the SECOND computer ALSO online. I need to be able to work up here and also have my server stay connected.

O2 Breather: OK are you running Windows 7 or Vista?

AHunter3: Umm, MacOS 10.4.11 on one computer, 10.5.8 on the other

O2 Breather: Oh, Macs. I will need to transfer you to our Mac tech support specialists.

:: on hold music ::
Mac VerizonDude: Hello and welcome to Verizon. May I have the phone number you’re calling about?

:: etc … lather rinse repeat of previous conversation almost verbatim down to the Windows 7 versus Vista question ::
Mac VerizonDude: You want to get a second computer online but you don’t want to use the wireless router any more?

AHunter3: I don’t mind the wireless router being plugged in but the wireless base station can’t connect to the internet EITHER, not while the server is making a PPPoE connection. And although the laptop could run from the wireless connection if I let the Airport Base Station make the first PPPoE connection, that won’t help the server any.

Mac VerizonDude: Well we can ship you a new DSL modem that is designed to make the PPPoE connection itself. Then any device you plug into it will be assigned an IP Address.

AHunter3: A public IP address?

Mac VerizonDude: No, a private IP address

AHunter3: That won’t do me any good, my development server has to have a public IP address.

Mac VerizonDude: Well, only one public IP address can be obtained at a time. There’s no way to plug a second computer in and expect it to be able to make a PPPoE connection once there’s already one running on that DSL modem.

AHunter3: I’ve been doing it for ten years, and for three years here in this location with this exact equipment. It was working fine until yesterday.

Mac VerizonDude: Well you were using a wireless router

AHunter3: No, I wasn’t. I didn’t have Airport connectivity enabled on either machine. And I had IP addresses that started with “70” or “74” or “141” and so on, not “192.168” or “10.something”

Mac VerizonDude: Were you using a virtual public network, then?

AHunter3: Nope, each computer was using PPPoE

Mac VerizonDude: Do you mind if I put you on hold for a moment?

:: on hold music ::

New Dude: Hello! My name is New Dude and I understand you are having problems getting your computer online.

AHunter3: Not exactly, no. I am having problems getting two different computers online. I can get either one to connect on a one-at-a-time basis but up until yesterday I could come in and plug in my laptop and make a connection, while the other computer which was already online stayed online. And both computers had a public IP address.

New Dude: But not at the same time.

AHunter3: Yes, at the same time. I could have a client connect to the database on the server from their office in Cincinnati or Perth Australia or wherever, and I could connect to the same database from my laptop and walk the client through the screens and make changes as we talked.

New Dude: Are you using a wireless router?

AHunter3: No, actually. Ethernet cables. PPPoE connections.

New Dude: Are you using a VPN?

AHunter3: No, actually both computers had a public IP address. Not that the laptop generally needed to have one, but it did anyhow. I’d be fine with the laptop running a private IP, but the other computer’s IP has to remain publically accessible.

New Dude: Well I don’t think you can do that.

AHunter3: Well, insofar as I’ve been doing it for 10 years, and it was working fine until yesterday, and in fact is still working that way at home, I’m rather inclined to think that you can.

New Dude: Can I have the model of DSL modem you’re using?

AHunter3: Westell Wirespeed B-90

New Dude: Whoa, that’s a very old model, that’s what we call a bridge modem, it doesn’t make a connection to the internet on its own at all, each computer has to negotiate its own connection. We should send you a newer modem.

AHunter3: But that’s the setup that works for me, to have each computer negotiate its own PPPoE connection to the internet. I even have a newer model modem, I switched them back and forth trying to troubleshoot this problem before I called in. But even with the newer model modem I have no interest in the modem making the internet connection itself unless it can permanently designate one of the two computers as the one to forward all packets aimed at the public IP address that it obtains, so that it effectively does network address translation to give the server a public IP address.

New Dude: I don’t think that’s possible.

AHunter3: Well that’s not what I was doing anyhow, the modem was just sitting there in bridge mode like you said, and each computer was making a PPPoE connection.

New Dude: Well, it’s just not possible for more than one computer to create a PPPoE connection through the same phone line.

AHunter3: You keep saying that word. I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

:: reuse recycle reiterate a few more times ::

AHunter3: OK let’s go at this a different way. Verizon told me from the beginning, back when you folks were still BellAtlantic in fact, that they don’t support this, so it’s not like I was promised that my DSL service would provide this capability. For all I know, someone at Verizon figured out that folks like me were able to do this and someone decided we should not be allowed to any more.

Perhaps Verizon prefers that only people who pay for a plan that specifically provides that feature should be allowed access to it. Now, I don’t know if I could afford such a plan change, but you do obviously have business clients. You obviously must have some kind of plan whereby they can put the corporate web server online with a public IP address and then put the folks working in the cubicles online with private IP addresses. How much more would it cost me to upgrade my plan to a plan that is designed to support what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years on the regular residential plan?

New Dude: I’ve never heard of such a thing. I don’t think there is such a plan. :dubious: I suppose you could call the business department and ask about it.

AHunter3: :smack: :: visualizes hordes of business owners in Manhattan being told by Verizon that what they’ve been doing for years can’t be done :: Umm, if I push 4 on my push button phone can I transfer back to the automated robot that picked up when I dialed in?

I never got an answer. I have no idea what they changed. it doesn’t seem to be an across-the-board plugging of an access hole I was previously exploiting: it’s still working fine here at home, the old way. I have yet to speak to a Verizon employee who seems to have much understanding of their own technology.

At the studio, I unplugged the hub, plugged the server directly into the DSL modem and got it online, then to connect the laptop to the internet I run a FireWire cable between the computers. I turned on Internet sharing on the server and switch to DHCP on the laptop and I’m online. I’d rather have it working the old way but I can live with this.

2

Toasting in Epic Bread.

See the problem is the folks what know what they fuck is going on usually aren’t manning the phones. Maybe if you keep trying to escalate you can get someone high enough who knows what’s going on.

3

I’m also surprised that you were (previously) able to get multiple public IPs via PPPoE over a single DSL account—I wouldn’t have thought it possible. I’ve no experience with Verizon DSL but I’m fairly sure BellSouth/AT&T DSL doesn’t support it. If it’s not technologically impossible (and I presume it isn’t, if you were doing it up until recently) then it still wouldn’t make much sense from their end, from a marketing standpoint.

I’m curious what they’ll say if you do manage to escalate to someone who’s better informed—my guess is you’re unlikely to get anywhere, unfortunately.

4

Well this is where I get to use my Network+ cert and be all smug, or get a technical slap down and learn something new.

It sounds like his current DSL modem makes a bridge connection to the DSLAM (the place where his ISP’s network interfaces with the telephone system) without authenticating. What this means his network computers can communicate with the DSLAM but until the DSLAM authenticates and authentrizes them they can’t do much else. PPPoE is basically a virtual dialup connection tunneled over Ethernet.

So due to the bridge to the DSLAM it’s like the DSLAM is setting right in his LAN with his other computers.
What sounds to like to me is before it let him have multiple connection session going at once, and now they’ve changed their systems to allow only one session at a time. I sed to have a dialup company a long time ago that’d let me have multiple concurrent dialup sessions. It was nice, as far as crappy dialup goes.

However given OP’s report that it works else where. It might be something else, or it might be the change hasn’t propagated across the system yet. I’d much rather an answer form the horse’s moth then my own speculation though.

5

I don’t know if it makes things easier to understand (by you, by me, or by the Verizon DSL tech support folks) but in this particular case my ISP is my telephone service provider. How does the phrase “the place where [my] ISP’s network interfaces with the telephone system” parse when both of them are Verizon environments?

6

Exactly the same. A DSLAM is a DSLAM. All that means is they share WAN links for data and voice, but connect exactly the same.
I had Verizon for dialup many years ago too. I know for a fact they allow multiple logins, or atleast used to. I had dual modems. One was a call waiting modem. So what I did was shot gun them. Basically dialout twice to the same number. It’d bond them and they’d act like one modem tat was twice as fast. Plus if someone called it’d disconnect on that line and drop to one dialout line, then reconnect when I hung up. Kind of a poor man’s ISDN.

Also it let me dialout from another house while still connected at home.

7

I know around here, Verizon has never allowed multiple concurrent PPPoE sessions on their DSLAMs, so it’s possible your local region had a misconfiguration on the back end that is slowly being fixed.

8

Well, as related in the first thread back in June 2000 (see original post), my installation was not pro forma, through neither intention nor fault of my own. Quite possibly, they (BellAtlantic back then, Verizon now) just assume(d) that insofar as they send an installer CD along with the DSL modem, their customers will be making use of it, and it will (probably; I’m guessing) configure their computers to obtain an IP via DHCP rather than PPPoE.

9

If you don’t mind me steering my own Pit thread into temporary GQ territory, let me ask you the last question I posed to the Verizon techie, more or less: does there exist a simple straightforward device or technology that will

a) make the PPPoE connection

b) let 2, 3, or more computers (and computer-like devices) optain private (192.168.xx.yy) IP addresses from it, as they would from a router, except that I’d want them to be permanent, not DHCP assigned, see next item

c) do network address translation as per my specifications, so that the local computer that is (let’s say) 192.168.1.13 is “NAT’ted” to the address obtained from Verizon via the PPPoE connection; in other words if Joe Blow in Cincinnati aims a web browser at 70.13.74.103 and that happens to be the address that the PPPoE connection has obtained from Verizon, then the web page that actually loads for Joe Blow is the index page hosted on 192.168.1.13; and if Sue Customer opens FileMaker Pro and asks it to display hosted database files at 70.13.74.103, the list it shows her are actually the files hosted on 192.168.1.13
??

I mean, I know if I dedicated an entire COMPUTER to the task I could put a second ethernet card in it and tell it to share the internet connection establsihed on eth01 to any & all devices on eth02; I’m not sufficiently savvy to know how to set up the packet forwarding or to make it work with static private IPs instead of DHCP, but more to the point, is there a simple device (router or switch or what-have-you) that is intrinsically designed for this exact task?

10

Can your (newish) modem let your public server sit in a DMZ? Then the rest of your computers, routers, airport, etc. can sit happily in the private LAN.

Then you can live in dhcp land like the rest of us, or if you must, configure the modem to use the local dns servers, and assign specific local 192.168.x.y addresses as appropriate if you need them to never change.

11

The DSL modem that Verizon provided me free does just that, for the record–you can designate a single DMZ host to accept all inbound traffic, which is static-NATed, and the other machines on the internal net are given private DHCP addresses. Request a new modem, maybe.

12

Couldn’t you set up port forwarding for the services on your server?

13

That was my first thought too, but then you have to know all the ports you are using, and keep adjusting if the port list ever changes. Actually the OP should do that )or some other sort of port based firewall) for safety if the server is placed in a dmz anyway, but that would be to protect the server, not to funnel the packets.

14

Demilitarized zone???

I think what you are saying/describing is what I want: the server is, in some fashion, presented with a public IP, everythign else is on the private LAN. I could ask Verizon about this or I could ask someone else about it if it is a do-it-yourself kind of project that need not involve Verizon at all?

If I’m going to ask anyone about it, I should probably know beforehand what the heck a DMZ is, sorry not familiar with that acronym except as spoken by news reporters in the Vietnam era. Hmm, wikipedia indicates that the acronym really does stand for demiliarized zone when referring to computer networks! OK but quite aside from what it stands for, is it something I myself can (fairly) easily set up, or is it time to call the above-referenced oxygen breathers again?

15

[quote=“AHunter3, post:14, topic:542145”]

Demilitarized zone???

thats exactly what it stands for - thnk about the attacks a public server will get from the wider internet, vs the need to share the info. So you isolate it from the rest of your lan, and don’t have anything there you can’t afford to lose.

If you have a modem that is less than 5 or maybe even 10 years old, it is probably in the core functionality to do this. Check the manual for your modem on if it is, and how to configure it.

Well,you seemed quite certain about setting up a sophisticated web/ftp/whatever server on your own, if you did that, then you shoudl be able to handle the modem configuration.

Be very aware of this: Youd server computer will be very publicly accessible to the whole internet. That means you need to be even more aware of security issues, including account and proper passwords, than ever before. It also means turning off ALL unnecessary services, and making very sure there is a separate firewall on the DMZ and on the LAN.

Unless you want trouble, I would make sure that if the server in the DMZ has an internal IP address also, it is NOT on the same network as the LAN. EG. the server shoudl be 192.168.5.x and the LAN should be 192.168.1.x. This you would set up via the modem config. Also, make sure the firewalls for both block all traffic from the other internal network. The reason for this is to prevent internal communication on the LAN between the DMZ and the inside network, in case the DMZ server should be compromised somehow. If you need to communicate with the server, then do it by using the public IP address like everyone else.

16

And it’s pretty easy to deal with: on every Verizon modem/router I’ve used in the last several years, it’s an option under “advanced firewall setup” somewhere, you specify a host on your local network to be the DMZ host.

More secure would be setting up port forwarding only for services you intend to use, of course.

17

Meh… I’m on a Mac, we think we’re bulletproof :wink:

But I never did any “setup” of the DSL modem. At all. Plugged the dang thing into the wall, plugged an ethernet cable into the RJ-45 slot and the other end into the hub. More ethernet cables from hub to computers & etc devices.

Should I call the verizon folks to guide me through the process or is there a convenient process by which one “sets up” one’s Westell model 6100 modem? (I assume I use that one and not the ancient Wirespeed bridge modem, right?)

18

Yeah, I’d assume so. I don’t have a 6100 but I’ve seen their admin interface. You oughta be able to do it if you’re comfortable with poking around the admin interface–go to the router’s IP address in a web browser when you set it up (this will be the gateway address it assigns to your computers on the LAN), and it should be pretty straightforward.

You’ll have to “set up” the new modem anyway, as you’ll be entering your PPPoE login/password on the modem itself instead of using the software on your individual machines. The technician will usually walk you through this if your area is like mine–they won’t just send you a new modem, they’ll send someone to install it for you.