From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Sep 9 20:49:59 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id UAA02455 for stable-outgoing; Tue, 9 Sep 1997 20:49:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from obie.softweyr.ml.org ([199.104.124.49]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id UAA02441 for ; Tue, 9 Sep 1997 20:49:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from wes@localhost) by obie.softweyr.ml.org (8.7.5/8.6.12) id VAA23751; Tue, 9 Sep 1997 21:57:31 -0600 (MDT) Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 21:57:31 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <199709100357.VAA23751@obie.softweyr.ml.org> From: Wes Peters To: Nate Williams CC: stable@freebsd.org, Don Croyle Subject: Re: 2.2.5 release, can it be postponed? In-Reply-To: <199709091850.MAA25301@rocky.mt.sri.com> References: <341565dd.68501361@smtp-gw01.ny.us.ibm.net> <19970909123253.13741@vinyl.quickweb.com> <86d8mie5y0.fsf@gelemna.ft-wayne.in.us> <199709091850.MAA25301@rocky.mt.sri.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Don Croyle lamented: % It often takes me two or three tries to connect to my ISP, by which % time a program that's attempting to open a socket has usually timed % out. Nate Williams writes: > Try the ping trick. It works. Also, PPP's auto mode is as good as any > other on-demand product I've ever used. The time-out problem is a > function of TCP/IP, not of PPP since it can't do anything with packets > when the link is down, and it's doing everything it can to get the > connection up, so if the first couple of attempts fail, the TCP/IP > protocol will give up. Exactly. Believe me, I've been through this forwards, backwards, sidewards, and every other -wards in the last nine months. I'm proud to say the TCP/IP dial-up router I've been involved in building is AS RELIABLE at connecting as FreeBSD ppp. ;^) (We route faster and do NAT faster, but that is mostly a function of running far less software; we typically have only 4 or 5 tasks running at a time.) If you've configured ppp -auto correctly, it will do as good a job as any. You may want to look into writing a little script that will try 4 or 5 times doing a ping -c 1 before attempting to connect to the on-line service. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com