How to set an ISDN Line

>Onramp 2
I guess that's ISDN 2. ie. 2 x 64k channels

>Do i need a router???
not necessarily, a terminal adaptor (TA) is the equivalent of a modem for ISDN.

An external TA will plug into the wall port provided by your telephone company and typically present a standard COM port to plug into the PC. external TA's tend to copy modems in the way that they are controlled so they just look like a modem to Linux. Typically they will use variations on the Hayes AT commands, all you need is to look at the manual for the TA and pick the correct init string as you would for a modem.

There are also versions that come as PCI and PCMCIA cards. To use an ISDN card with Linux you will need ISDN support from a kernel module. Here's the FAQ from the developers of the module.
http://www.isdn4linux.de/faq/

If you have a dedicated ISDN router then it will plug into the wall port and present you with an RJ45 ethernet port (sometimes they are integrated into ethernet hubs). So connecting this to a Linux box requires a network card. ISDN Routers vary in features, some have built in Firewall capabilities, Address Translation etc. Setting these up usually means plugging a PC into a serial port and either using a supplied setup program or a terminal emulator program, you give it the ISP's number and settings etc. and it does the rest. None of the machines on the network need to know anything about ISDN, they just need to know the IP address of the router so that they can use it as a gateway to any machine not on their network.

A Linux box and a TA can act as a firewall/router so that the rest or your network can connect through it to the net. If you want a linux solution to create an IDSN firewall/router I'd recommend a dedicated distribution such as smoothwall http://www.smoothwall.org/ .

Telstra have left behind a little box with
two RJ45 ports in it.
Is this the TA??? there is no serial port on it.

How do i connect this to the linux box??
can i plug it straight into the network?? or
do i need a separate network card in the linux box??



regards
Andrew

ok.... i went an bought an ISDN card from the shop and
put it in the linux box..

I can now connect the modem to the ISP...
I use a script called dialisdn ..
i think it connects as when i do a ifconfig i get
an extra entry saying ippp yada yada yada...

now.. i have been given 8 IP address from my ISP.
ranging from A.B.C.160-167 ... i noticed that if
i didn't specify the ip address of the card then when i
did an ifconfig there was no ip address allocated to the
card. i can only assume that there is no DHCP and i must
do it manually...

Now in the dialisdn script it asks for a local and remote
IP address.. im not sure what the difference is so i put
the same address for both...
Now when i connects it has the IP address A.B.C.160...
then i checked the routing table and there was no default
route... so i removed the one for the modem and then added
one for the ISDN line with...
route add default gw A.B.C.160
im not sure if this is right???

maybe i need to know the default gateway of my ISP??

any help would be great

Sorry for the delay - I did not get an email saying this had been updated, and came across it again by luck (EE reeeaaallly needs to come up with a way to see all questions upon which a user has commented - there's no way I can remember them all)

OK, first off - did you ask Telestra what the box they left behind was for?  I'd like to help out here, but I'd rather not make you re-invent the wheel if possible.

I guess I could rephrase that as:  Are you using the box that Telestra left behind in any way now that you have your own ISDN card for linux?  If they left you a perfectly good router, there's no reason not to use it.  On the other hand if it only provides circuit signal termination (i.e. an external NT1), then we need to continue work on your current config...

-Jon

BTW, why is the linelength on your posts so short (compare a long comment of mine [and Bruce R] to one of yours)?  Are you pasting from an external text editor, or is this some new 'feature' [hehe] of EE?

-Jon

hmmm - maybe your browser (or you) is inserting linebreaks when it hits the edge of a text entry box instead of wrapping as mine does.  Pasting some of your comment text into this text entry box seems to confirm this as the likely cause.

Not really important at all - just wondering...

-Jon

BTW, I just saw the 1 point question you posted that refers back here - you know that you can post a zero point question and get the same results, right?  

Anyway, I await your response on the ISDN issues.

Cheers,
-Jon

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