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Date:      Sat, 9 Aug 1997 15:32:30 +0200 (MET DST)
From:      Wolfgang Helbig <helbig@MX.BA-Stuttgart.De>
To:        peter@grendel.IAEhv.nl (Peter Korsten)
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: ISDN drivers/cards
Message-ID:  <199708091332.PAA00255@helbig.informatik.ba-stuttgart.de>
In-Reply-To: <19970809055307.20710@grendel.IAEhv.nl> from Peter Korsten at "Aug 9, 97 05:53:07 am"

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> Wolfgang Helbig shared with us:
> > > 
> > > This is really my main point, bisdn works for some folks and not for
> > > other, but is no real reliable base for part of FreeBSD. It's a mess and
> > > that could explain why some people have so much luck and other don't.
> > > Mostly boiling down to "luck" I expect.
> > 
> > The messy part starts when you try to run ppp over isdn. But straight
> > bisdn-097 works fine for a lot of people. I installed it nearly a year ago
> > successfully. It was one of the first things I did with FreeBSD, so
> > it didn't take much expertise to install.
> 
> But as a matter of fact, raw IP over HDLC isn't really used outside
> of Germany. At least, it isn't used one country to the west, the
> Netherlands. I also notice that people speaking in favour of bisdn
> are called 'Wolfgang' and 'Hellmuth', both your average German name.

So call me by my hebrew name, seev :-)

But seriously, also in Germany most ISPs only offer PPP connections to
private customers, mostly because they want to serve more customers
than they have IP addresses and thus need some protocoll to use
dynamically assigned addresses.  So I'm rather lucky being able
to use the network of the ``Berufsakademie'', which is a school in
Stuttgart I am teaching at as for part time.  My main Internet
connection is via a PC located in the Berufsakademie, which is
running FreeBSD and bisdn.

On the other hand the ISPs at least in Stuttgart *do* offer
ISDN-connections with raw IP over HDLC to business customers, some
of which are happily using FreeBSD machines with bisdn for routing
and firewalling.

So there is at least some use of bisdn-097 and it should be similar
in other Eurorpean countries.

> I need PPP to make my ISDN card of use and though the bisdn code
> may be okay (I can neither confirm nor deny that), installing it
> is a real pain in the you-know-what and the PPP-hack looks really
> yuckie to me.
> 
> I would be very happy with ISDN-card support as a LKM and a PPP
> daemon that can talk to something else than a serial line. If
> I could offer help in this, feel free to mail me.

Just grab bisdntest-2 (if you're running FreeBSD 2.2.2), bisdn-097
and BISDN-ppp-FreeBSD2.2.tgz from ftp.muc.ditec.de, try to make it
work, and fix it if it doesn't. I understand that bisdn is rewritten
by Hellmuth.  The next release might hit the disks in about a year.
For the time being, a tutorial is needed for installing/configuring
bisdn and ppp. So if you want to help ...

Wolfgang



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