> Hello ladies and gentlemen! > > I'm having a frustrating problem. My internet is highly unstable when > using bit torrent. I don't think there's anything special about my > configuration: my gateway is a craptop with inbuilt Intel ethernet and > a url0 USB ethernet for the modem. The connection is bridged, using pf > (obviously) for routing / firewall and kernel PPPoE for dialing via my > bridged netcomm nb5+.
I suspect it is a problem with your modem. Have you tried replacing it? I have seen modems lock up on bittorrent/mule traffic. Usually bridge mode prevents this, but I have no experience with your particular modem. > Basically, when I try to use bit torrent the connection dies after > about 20mins. The kernel PPPoE daemon doesn't bring it back up. In > fact, even doing > #sh /etc/netstart > doesn't bring it back up. The only way to bring it back up is via a > reboot :( In your case, reboot == disconnect + connect USB ethernet, it may even reset the modem if it is powered by USB. Perhaps you can just unplug/replug your USB ethernet cable and see if this removes the need to reboot? It may also be a problem with the url0 ethernet driver. > Very frustrating. It also takes about 10-15mins to > reconnect; surely that's a bit too long, even for PPPoE? This is expected since your ISP does not know you terminated the old session. Thus you are waiting for it to timeout before your ISP would let you establish a new one. You can compile a kernel with PPPOE_TERM_UNKNOWN_SESSIONS (see pppoe(4)) to have pppoe terminate the old session. > I know this > isn't a problem with my ISP as I've always been able to download bt > stably when I was using the modem in router mode. I thought it might > have been an MTU problem, but I'm using the mss fix in /etc/pf.conf, > so I don't think it's that. I played around with a few values just to > be sure, but I'm open to suggestions. What you describe is not related to MSS/MTU > I'll post my dmesg, /etc/pf.conf and /etc/hostname.pppoe. If there's > anything else I should send, please let me know! After you have tried the above suggestions, and if the problem is NOT in url(4) driver and/or the modem you can enable debugging on the pppoe0 interface 'ifconfig pppoe0 debug' and/or use tcpdump on the ethernet interface to examine pppoe packets. Check the archives for details. -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
