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Internal DSL Modems and Linux Drivers? 18

Posted by Cliff from the oh-no!-not-another-winmodem! dept.
xipe asks: "Has anyone made a driver for the internal (pci) DSL modems that have come out in the last few months? (Cisco, Alcatel and others have started marketing them online.) I have used the external with great success ( with Linux BTW), but since I moved outside of Bellsouths ADSL service area, I have yet to get a good connection again. I noticed that these modems have drivers for MS and Mac, but no Linux-- is someone working on these or are they going to go the way of the winmodem? I certainly hope not..... " Neither do I.
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Internal DSL Modems and Linux Drivers? More

Internal DSL Modems and Linux Drivers?

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  • Re:DSL Is good stuff, but.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Thats why very large transparent squid boxes are going to be huge.. I work at an ISP just starting to offer dsl and we have a couple of transparent squid boxes w/ over 250gb of disk space.. You wouldnt believe the amount of bandwidth that we save. Thus it can be used by power users such as yourself and I and the "normal" customers who just browse the web dont ever notice.
  • Even the external DSL equipment isn't fully standardized yet. The upcoming standard is called g.Lite, but not every DSL equipment manufacturer is compliant yet. Give it some time.

    Once that happens, I really see no reason why a DSL card couldn't be treated like an Ethernet card by the kernel. It doesn't need all the weird circuit-switch code that ISDN does ... just initialize the card, download the configuration from the DSLAM, and bind an IP address.

    Unfortunately, I think internal DSL cards aren't really going to make a big splash. All of the manufacturers are going to want to do USB instead; it's easier than trying to provide tech support to a bunch of home users who would otherwise have to open up their computers to plug in an internal DSL card, or even an internal Ethernet card to connect to an external DSL router.
  • Ok, I have to wonder, when are people going to realize the USB sucks? Sure, it is nice for some applications (hey, I don't have to open my box!), but who wants to have a bunch of little doilies hanging off their box and monitor and hub?

    It doesn't make sense from a technical standpoint either. PCI 1.x offers around 1Gbit of bandwidth, 100 times more than USB. Granted, most applications don't need that much throughput, but if you put in sound, ethernet, modem, and possible a TV Tuner (I still wonder about this one), you're easily maxing out USB but PCI still has room to spare.

    Additionally, (assuming USB is like other bus systems) efficiency goes down as utilization goes up, so you'll never get 10Mbit with that many devices on the bus anyways.

    What is really necessary is two busses. We could use a low speed bus for interfacing with input devices (ie keyboard and mouse) like on those old IBM PS/2s. And then we'd make a high speed bus that the CPU can easily interface with, and since we don't want all of our devices hanging outside the computer, we could put it on the motherboard. Since this highspeed bus would connect all of our peripherals, we could call it Peripheral Component Interconnect. Oh wait.
  • I'm assuming you are trying to ftp via command line from a box behind the masq box. You have to use passive mode ftp to do this. I believe a "quote pasv" will do the trick.... It's been a while since I've used passive by hand so I dont remember. There are plenty of gui ftp clients for Linux (and Windows :P) that will do pasv. If that's NOT the problem, try a "insmod ip_masq_ftp" on the masq server if you havent already. I dunno if this helped, but I thought I'd give it a shot.
  • I personally would use the VPN-HOWTO found (in RedHat at least) at /usr/doc/HOWTO/mini/VPN. It uses ssh and if you enable compression, speeds even on a dialup line can dramatically increase. One hint from experience though: If you have a bidirectional line of I'd say a meg or more, dont use compression. It actually slows you down due to the number of packets it's processing. Just use the vpn script and make a private net between the remote and local machines. There is also vpnd (search Freshmeat) but I've never used it.

    The other option would be to choose four ports on the main box, use port forwarding, and map those ports to port 23 on each machine, but I would strongly suggest using ssh in some way.
  • who said it was ethernet over ATM? the offerings I've seen are IP over ATM... nothing even remotely looking like ethernet.

    You would need a native ATM stack/driver to take the cells from the DSL card and pull out the IP packets, then hand them over to the IP stack in the kernel. In otherwords you're back at needing a dedicated driver... although it may be able to share a lot of code with the drivers for the native ATM cards - especially since in a way this is nothing more than an ATM card with a single, specific hardware link.
  • Whoa! Rain in your doubt for a bit. I have DSL through USWest. I did not have to sign any contract or agree to use their service for any period of time. In my experience, there is plenty of bandwidth. I have not run into any sort of bottlenecks with USWest's equipment or service. Indeed, I usually get 50 to 60 kb/sec, which is over twice my rated 256kbit connection. For the record: Standard phone line == $30 / month Deluxe DSL == $30 / month DSL net service == $20 / month Grand total: $80 / month The deluxe DSL it a 24/7 connection which allows you to use your voice telephone at the same time. YMMV depending on area and line quality, but I am more than satisfied.
  • USWEST ADSL also lets you use your phone line for voice while you're using it for data. This is nothing new. AND it comes in at 256K (although I regularly get more than that) AND it's $50 per month (including ISP charges)...
    --
  • Whether your ISP can keep up is less dangerous if you can switch to another ISP.

    Here in US West, you buy DSL service from US West. That gets your data from your Ethernet cable to the Ethernet gear in the telephone company building. Then your packets drop into the digital network (in this area I think it's an ATM cloud) and they pop out on your ISP's connection. You are allowed to select an ISP. So if you are not satisfied with one ISP you tell US West to direct your packets to your new ISP.

    Most cable TV data systems only let your connect to the ISP being run by the cable company.

    In both cases your bandwidth is shared with others at some point. On cable, it's probably shared with all your neighbors. On DSL, it's shared with everyone in the same DSL interface in the phone office, and in your ISP's connections... but the DSL shared points are 10/100Mpbs Ethernet links or faster rather than the cable modem speeds.

  • And then we'd make a high speed bus that the CPU can easily interface with, and since we don't want all of our devices hanging outside the computer, we could put it on the motherboard.

    Umm.. ever hear of SCSI ?

    You gotta figure if it's fast enough for a hard-drive it oughtta be fast enough for almost anything. And you can have multiple SCSI busses and put, say, a hard-drive and a wide CD-ROM and maybe a wide video capture (if such a thing exists). And then another bus for the lower speeds like normal CD-ROMs and Zips and Scanners, printers, etc.

    Of course SCSI does seem to be the standard that never happened on PCs.. mostly because of the prohibitive cost of cables. When you need cables with 50 to 68 wires in them (and don't tell me only 25 are connected, good cables have 25 return wires so that there is less impedence on the ground signal. This is the reason USB/Firewire/etc. was invented: They are high-speed serial busses, and thus require fewer wires, but parallel busses will always be faster just because you can do high-speed on 16 wires instead of 1 (or even 8 instead of 1 is still great).

    -Biscuit.
  • My question is why can't you soft load an on-board microcontroller with code to do that and then make the information available to the PCI bus as if it were an ethernet card installed?

    That would arguably be the most effecient method of doing this.

    My reasoning: You write one piece of code to extract the ethernet frame out of the ATM. And then if you use a common ethernet driver (ie NE2000) that every OS has a driver for, you have a product you can market to every PC user....

    Damn, I have great ideas...
  • My company has developped a PCI DSL card.
    The PCI DSL card can't be compared to the external box (ADSL in - Ethernet Out): the most popular ADSL chipset (DynaMiTe from Alcatel) has only an ATM output. The external box must add a compilated (and thus, expensive) ATM to Ethernet convertor.
    On a PCI DSL card, this hardware convertor is not present and ATM cells are delivered to the PC. It is then up to the driver software to extract Ethernet frame out of the ATM cells. (An alternative solution that is also on the market is PPP-over-ATM).
    Porting the complex drivers from Windows to Linux is a fairly complex undertaking, though I expect that this will be done in the not-so-distant future.

    I think what we are experiencing here, is an evolution of the WinModem debate: while it is possible to make a full-hardware standard modem, you cannot avoid a whole bunch of control firmware for more advanced technologies a la ADSL. As a result, every piece of hardware could be classified as a 'WinSomething' because you will need dedicated drivers to get it to work.

    The only hope is that Linux will be strong enough to persuade companies to invest in dedicated drivers...
  • If you are worried about congestion at your ISP because of overbooking, then you better get used to it, or get off the 'net. The Internet is based on "Statistical Multiplexing" ...aka, not everyone is using it at once, so your average bandwidth is less.

    This is one area that ISPs DO have experience, thats walking the line of having enough bandwidth.

  • You're rated 256kbit?! What the hell did I do to end up with 4.8mbit?

  • Hey there! If you have such great ideas, why don't you tell me how to go about my DSL problem? Here's what it is: I am connected through Bell-Sympatico in Canada, via external Nortel Networks high speed modem. And of course I'm using Linux (RedHat 6.0, Kernel 2.2.x) in a home network using IP masquerading. It's been working fine for the most part, except that I cannot ftp, more precisely, I can't upload any files even from my gateway computer. Whenever I try sending some file from home, the conection resets and the process gets stuck in the middle (no pun intended). So, any clue? Anyone? Thanks a whole lot, Carlson

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