PPPoA & Actiontec 701WG

[Pralix]

I am in the process of building a five zone firewall. Currently I am working on the WAN side of things. I have an Actiontec DSL modem with an ethernet and usb port on it. Qwest is my provider and they prefer that PPPoA be used to connect to the net. PPPoE works but tends to lose connection. I would like to put the Actiontec into bridge mode and use my firewall to do the PPPoA authentication. I have the DSL modem connected to my firewall via the ethernet port.Looking at net.example in baselayout-1.12.0_pre12, I see the relevant PPPoA information.

This is the relevant settings that I can see:

Code: Select all

config_ppp0=( "ppp" )

link_ppp0="/dev/null"			# PPPoA and ISDN links should have this
plugins_ppp0=("pppoa")

I am unsure about the link_ppp0 line. Should it be eth1 since that is the port the ethernet from the modem is connected to? I have not found much information on PPPoA other than on the Speedtouch modems which use USB.

[Katphish]

hello,

It is my understanding that PPPoA is strictly hardware dependent. ATM (the signal method used) requires the support to be at the card/appliance level as opposed to PPPoE which can run in userspace.

Unless the modem supports "half-bridge" mode, you are going to need a PPPoA card for the firewall. "half-bridge" means the modem does the PPPoA and hands off the DHCP to the firewall.

Here is a link to the relevent page from the DSL Howto v1.71, 2002-07-21:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DSL-HOWTO/configure.html

Section 3.2.4 specifically addresses PPPoA.

[KB7OEB]

You might look at doing a bridge firewall, then you don't have to do anything special with the modem

[syn_ack]

I am in the process of building a five zone firewall. Currently I am working on the WAN side of things. I have an Actiontec DSL modem with an ethernet and usb port on it. Qwest is my provider and they prefer that PPPoA be used to connect to the net. PPPoE works but tends to lose connection. I would like to put the Actiontec into bridge mode and use my firewall to do the PPPoA authentication. I have the DSL modem connected to my firewall via the ethernet.....<SNIP>

Hi Pralix,

Same setup with Qwest. I want the same thing you do. Essentially bridge the connection from the DSL modem to my Linux box where I can control the firewalling and routing. As soon as my mom moves out I will be taking over the DSL account. Spent alot of time researching and can't seem to find a straight-up answer on wether this can be done or not.
If you have some additional info since your initial posting, Please, pretty please, share.
.

Here's a link that you'll find usefull in the meantime about the ActiontecGT701.

Doing a Google search using string "Hacking the ActionTec GT701 DSL Modem", will find tons or really kickass info.

Thanks