[ale] Phone line networking

[Tom & JaVonn]

Jeff:

Success!  I plugged this Gateway PC with Debian 3.0 installed into the home phone system, set the gateway to their LinkSys router, and was on the internet!  Furthermore, I was able to apt-get install several programs, including smbclient.  Then I could view the shares on a Win98 box, and transfer files to the Debian box.  Pretty slick.   

However, look at the output of ifconfig after a bit of use:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
richard:/smbmnt# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:06:25:04:55:33  
          inet addr:192.168.1.7  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:29731 errors:8 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:16
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:24 txqueuelen:100 
          RX bytes:18286928 (17.4 MiB)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:5 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:3924  Metric:1
          RX packets:68 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:68 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:4494 (4.3 KiB)  TX bytes:4494 (4.3 KiB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe being beta software excuses it from recording TX packets.  I'm wondering if 24 collisions is reasonable, and the error and frame count on the RX packets too? 

I'm tempted to buy a used or surplus D-Link DHN-520 which also has beta drivers available.  BTW, what is the model of your Diamond card, and is it still in production???

Thanks,
Tom
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 23 Dec 2002 11:44:15 -0600 (CST)
Jeff Stenhouse <stenhous at students.uiuc.edu> wrote:

> On Mon, 23 Dec 2002, Tom & JaVonn wrote:
> 
> > Jeff:
> >
> > Are you psychic?  This project was back-burner til past week.
> 
> Heh, some people have said so.  But I doubt it.
> 
> > I returned to your site to look for newer driver, but found none at all!
> 
> The driver is still on there, but the link isn't.
> http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~stenhous/linux_hpna2_0_v2_34_0_2.tar.gz
> is the URL, if you still needed it.  I had no part in developing it, so
> there won't be any newer ones from me :P
> 
> > Email to LinkSys gave a nice reply "sorry we haven't got the resources to keep up with Linux drivers".  Further googling produced a link to LinkSys own ftp site where the Broadcom beta drivers reside.
> 
> D'oh.  My card's a Diamond, and they tend to disavow all knowledge of
> Linux's existence.
> 
> > Also, google pointed me to detailed instructions for using the Broadcom driver on homepna.com
> >
> > So, I tried with the 2.4.3 kernel that Broadcom used.  Finally got a
> clean compile, but could NOT get the module loaded.  Kernel 2.2.23 gave a
> duplicate name error, but 2.2.17 compiled cleanly, and the module loaded,
> and the device flashed a light like it was polling!  Course, I can't test
> it until I take it to the home in question, since this is my only hpna
> card.
> >
> > Anyway, by patching several source files (changing the name that was duplicated ) I was able to do just as well with kernel 2.2.23
> >
> > I'll lug the box to Marietta this week and take it out for a spin.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Tom
> 
> Glad to hear you're having some success.  I hope that I get this
> PCNet-Home card working, since I've heard a lot of people with the same
> card have used this module with 100% success.  I'm really just hoping I
> have to tweak the settings to get it to work.
> Good luck with your HPNA networking fun.  Hope it works :)
> -Jeff
> 
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