hi all, i have an Adsl internet connection with the tiscali provider and i just solved my problem of getting the IP address on my openbsd machine. i wish to share my experience here, feel free to correct my english :P
tiscali's adsl support only pppoa protocol (rfc 2364) and this is a problem if you want to connect with pppoe with a modem/router with ethernet port and you don't want to be natted behind the router. i tried the so called "Bridge Mode Only" without success while i succesfully used it on another adsl line with pppoe protocol configured by the ISP. The trick come out with the last router's firmware update. The new firmware let me flag an "Half Bridge" mode. I own a Linksys am200 (annex A) router, you should check if your model support half bridge if you want to try this configuration. Once in Half Bridge the router connect with pppoa to the ISP router, log on with pap/chap and give you the public IP with dbcp protocol, after this it start to work as half bridge: copy the IP packets from the ethernet to the pppoa channel and vice versa. to configure the openbsd box is very simple, just put in /etc/hostname.nfe0 (change with your lan card name): dhcp up !route add -host 213.205.24.16 -interface -link nfe0 -expire 1 !route add default 213.205.24.16 change 213.205.24.16 with the gateway's IP of your ISP (i check this on the router's web administration page, it never change for me), also change "nfe0" with your lan card. you can try without the 2 "route add" command if it works, i had to use them because the gateway is on a different subnet of my public IP and the dhclient command doesn't configure it automatically (anyone know another solution to this?). regards Luigi