Linux as an ISDN Based Remote Access Server?

Richard Becke asks: " I am planning to set up a Linux box as an ISDN-based dialin server for my company network. I have not been able to find any information about using multiple ISDN cards with Linux. We need to serve at least 6 simultaneous connections. Any ideas or tips would be most welcome. The question can be rephrased like this: How do i set up a Linux-based ISP solution?"

Comments

You can do this with Spellcaster ISDN cards.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spellcaster (a Canadian company) makes several BRI and PRI cards. They also give away a product called "Babylon" that can be used to control up to four (IIRC) ISDN cards, including those of other manufacturers. So, if you have 4 ISA slots, you can link up four BRI cards and seamlessly bond them or unbond them as needed, even dropping to accept incoming calls and faxes. Which is pretty cool. I use two of them and Hylafax at the same time, so I can drop back to one 64 bit channel should I get three faxes at once. I have been very pleased with the Spellcaster cards, too -- no problems, remarkable resistance to noise, easily maintaining two week connections, and if you have a problem with the adaptors or the software, you can call them directly and speak to the coders and/or techs. You can do a whole lot of weird things with Babylon, so it is nice to be able to call and ask the guy who wrote the code how the hell to do it.

I have recommended them to a number of people.

www.spellcast.com

One word of warning -- the tech named Ben can be really cranky, so if he is on a rip, you might need to call back later. Aside from that, great hardware, great software, and Babylon makes it easy.

One other thing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can get a PRI in, you can (well, you can with SBT) get just some of the channels activated. With a Spellcaster PRI card you can use just those channels. I have several friends doing that now (there used to be a much larger difference between a PRI and fractional T1 in Texas). One nice thing is that you can get the ISA PRI card so that you don't have to waste a PCI slot.

I've got one, works great with Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

It supported Linux from the start. I have finally moved (drum roll please) from 1.2.13 (Ded Rat) to 2.0.36 (Debian) on my old 386/486 mutant Cyrix box that serves as my router with the Token Ring and Ethernet adaptors and my beloved Spellcaster BRI. Perhaps I will even apply the 2.0.37 and 2.0.38 patches some day! I have a Data Commute BRI adaptor and it has been as reliable as the AC above noted. I really, really like it. I would buy one again, and I have suggested that others buy it. It has that wonderful characteristic of being trouble free to the point that when I needed to get the docs for a firmware upgrade, it had been so long since I looked at them that I had to reread them. Very nice.

I will likely go with ADSL soon (well, when I get to it, in my copious free time), but I could not do without ISDN and the Spellcaster card made it simple.

Dr. Love (no account yet)

go ahead!

[Anonymous Coward]

isdn dial-in is among the most stable services at the ISP where i work. (we could almost count the total downtime in seconds for the last two years!)

we use passive cards with the HiSax driver, but the eicon server cards (active cards) looks very promising (i think this is http://www.eicon.de) with an active card you could be able to accept modem v.34 and v.90 calls as well...

read /usr/src/linux/Documentation/isdn/* from a recent kernel tree, there is a lot of useful info there. if you like linux, you may want to avoid teles cards (their intellectual property policies suck)

disclaimer: i made my experiences in europe, the isdn signalling protocol is different in the US, and i do not know how well it is implemented or how stable isdn service from the telco is...

again: just do it ;)

What cards are supported..

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had three spellcaster cards.. Very very bad luck with the stability of the driver. How well is the internal sportster supported? (Hisax? right) They didn't change the card or something.. Right?

I'm looking at doing this same kind of thing

[Evan]

What are the best places to find information about this sort of thing? In another few weeks, I would really like to set up a dial-in/firewall box to allow 4 different locations to share a WAN through ISDN connections, with occasional regular modem dial-in if I can manage it.

I don't expect any problems setting up the firewall part, but the ISDN part is really bothering me. I've considered using a pair of routers (Netgear, Ascend, etc), a pair of ISDN "modem"s (Impact IQ), or an internal card (Spellcaster). I've had extensive problems with cheap unattended routers in the past, and trying to run 256Kbps through serial ports bothers me. On the other hand, I can't find *anyone* who sell the frigging cards. Lots of *manufacturers*, yes, but no pricing or sales info unless I call (and that only worked for Spellcaster, nobody else has called back). Plus, the cards appear to be twice as expensive as the routers and "modem"s, which makes no sense to me.

This would make a great HOWTO, I think. If I manage it, I'll write one.

Re:I'm looking at doing this same kind of thing

[WowMan]

Go syncronous. The cards are expensive ($400) but it is the fastest solution. With this setup, you can use a syncronous ISDN terminal adapter, which are usually much higher in quality. I like Adtran myself

DONT USE SERIAL PORT DEVICES

[Anonymous Coward]

The impact's dont let you use channels to other places (ch1 to place a ch2 to place b), and all serial ISDN devices are SLOW (sync/async conversion). Spellcaster is okay if: A) You dont mind the instability of their beta 2.2.x drivers or can tolerate 2.0.x B) Don't mind that they dont play nice with the rest of linux networking. (i.e., you can't use diald to do dial-on-demand with filters to keep DNS updates from bringing the link up; it's hard to do anything but trivial routing, etc. because of babylon). C) You dont mind having propritary code run your system.. I'd suggest you look into a hisax based card (like the internal sportster)..

Re:DONT USE SERIAL PORT DEVICES

[matts.nu]

I am using a serial port device, the USRobotics (aka 3Com) Courier I-Modem. There is nothing slow about this device. I have 30 ms ping and 64kb throughput to the corporate net I dial into. Though I admit that I haven't tried 128kb, mainly because the serial port in my computer don't support more than 115kb (the I-Modem will do 230kb).

Open Source solution

[TestGeek]

I admit to being biased ....... Ariel Corp makes plugin cards designed for Remote Access, and support ISDN and V.90 connections. Look at the Ariel HomePage for details. The drivers for these cards were recently open sourced, and they are available with the RedHat 6.x distros.

ISDN cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't overlook Eicon (although their site is unreachable at the moment.) They have cards with integrated or external NT1. These work using ppp and various config files. I must admit to having had some frustration with the Spellcaster cards....the docs aren't great, which isn't the end of the world, but their software has been in beta _forever_, and the babylon driver (or is it the hardware) doesn't quite seem to behave reliably. Good luck with it, gents...

Some pointers

[mconstable]

I've been selling ISDN based ISP servers in Australia for nearly two years now with a moderate degree of success. Fortunately the main internal components, the internal ISDN card and the 8-port analog modem cards, are made locally.

http://www.netserva.com for some indication of the hardware and I understand the company in Melboune who supply the ISDN card (passive HiSax based) also now have a US port of the isdn4linux code and have a sales outlet or partner in the US.

http://www.traverse.com.au may be able to help you directly with some info.

http://www.moreton.com.au are the people that provide the 8-port PCI 56k V90 modem card which I also believe is usable in the US.

These pointers may help you evaluate some possibilities.

--markc

Use 3 Teles BRI 16.3 cards

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used these cards for some time now, and use kernel 2.0.36 in combination with redhat 4.2. For Y2K compliancy i now use redhat 5.2.

Take three Teles cards 16.3 BRI ISA in a motherboard board with of course at least 3 ISA slots. Manually jumper the cards at io adresses :

0x180, 0x280 and 0x380

load the hisax driver with this :

modprobe hisax type=3,3,3 protocol=2,2,2 io=0x180,0x280,0x380 irq=5,10,15 id=teles1%teles2%teles3

check of course that those resources are free in your PC.

next assign ippp0 and ippp1 to teles1, ippp2 and ippp3 to teles2 , finally ippp4 and ippp5 to teles3.

One uses the "isdnctrl bind ..." option to do that. To lock B channel 0 of teles2 onto ippp2 we would use

isdnctrl bind ippp2 teles2,0

Here's the script to fire up ippp5 on the teles3 card (bound to the second B channel):

#!/bin/bash
# syncPPP dialin configuration with static IP
#

NAME=mySERVER # name of pppserver
MYIP=10.1.1.3 # my static IP nummer (from eth0)
REMIP=10.1.1.106 # IP number of syncPPP ISDN client
MYMSN=209876543 # my tel number, without 0, with area code (applies in Holland)

/sbin/isdnctrl verbose 3
/sbin/isdnctrl system on
/sbin/isdnctrl addif ippp5
/sbin/isdnctrl eaz ippp5 $MYMSN
/sbin/isdnctrl pppbind ippp5 teles3,1
/sbin/isdnctrl secure ippp5 off
/sbin/isdnctrl huptimeout ippp5 90
/sbin/isdnctrl l2_prot ippp5 hdlc
/sbin/isdnctrl l3_prot ippp5 trans
/sbin/isdnctrl encap ippp5 syncppp
/sbin/isdnctrl dialmode ippp5 auto
/sbin/ifconfig ippp5 $MYIP pointopoint $REMIP
/sbin/route add $REMIP ippp5

/sbin/ipppd +pap name $NAME \
proxyarp \
$MYIP:$REMIP \
-detach \
mru 1500 \
mtu 1500 \
lcp-restart 1 \
/dev/ippp5 &

One would fire up 6 of these scripts, one for each ipppx device. Fill-out the pap-secrets like this :

# Secrets for authentication using PAP
# client server secret IP addresses
#
# Intranet syncppp dialin
myCLIENT mySERVER "secretSERVER"
mySERVER myCLIENT ""

And it works.

Regards,

Robert Stockmann
stock@infomagic.nl or
stock@sba.nl

Re:Use 3 Teles BRI 16.3 cards

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a small error, there should two bind commands:

isdnctrl bind ippp2 teles2,0
isdnctrl pppbind ippp2

Robert
stock@infomagic.nl or stock@sba.nl