PPPoE concentrator is not responding

[horizon981]

Guys, I know there are already enough posts on connectivity problem, but I couldn't find one that matches mine...

Anyways...
I have Knoppix 3.3. I was trying to connect to Internet. I have an ADSL modem that I directly connect to my NIC, with an always ON type of connection.
When I went to the ADSL/PPPoE configuration settings, it told me that it has found one device (eth0).
I clicked OK, to which it said that the access concentrator is not responding.

I come from a windows background, and quite frankly, was hit with a surprise shock.
What is a PPPoE concentrator?
What is the problem here?

Can anybody help me with it??

[Urvang]

hi buddy, m facing the same problem, too....

someone please reply....

[Harry Kuhman]

SImple fix, don't connect directly to the modem, see answer #4. Of course, it can be done without this, but I can't see any good reason to avoid this simple and inexpensive fix.

[westcoast]

I also get the message about the access concentrator not responding, but this is the first time I've got this after almost a year of using the knoppix cd with no problems.
I don't use a router.
Why would this suddenly be a problem?
Is this something my provider can correct?

I've got the 3.7 cd and the 5.0.1. Same problem with both.

I tried 'Repair my Connection' on WinXP but doesn't help.

[Urvang]

@Harry

I've checked Answer#4 already.....but not of help.

Let me give u some more information:
--> I'm using a ADSL modem with router ; company: Huawei.
--> The error message is: "Access concentrator is not responding......." with giving possible reason as "It may already been running". I suspect it is already running, because PING test is successful. Also, if I put the IP directly in the address bar of Internet Browser, the website opens OK.
--> So from my similar experience with another flavour of Linux (also a Live CD), I know that this has to do with DNS server IP.

--> So, Please tell me how can I specify, manually, the two IPs of DNS servers. (I know the two IPs)

[Harry Kuhman]

hi buddy, m facing the same problem, too.......

--> I'm using a ADSL modem with router ; company: Huawei.
--> The error message is: "Access concentrator is not responding......." with giving possible reason as "It may already been running". I suspect it is already running, because PING test is successful. Also, if I put the IP directly in the address bar of Internet Browser, the website opens OK.
--> So from my similar experience with another flavour of Linux (also a Live CD), I know that this has to do with DNS server IP.

Well, if you have a router (even internal to the modem) and the other user does not, then you don't have the same problem.

I'm not at all clear on what you are doing to get this error, and what steps you have done up to whatever point you get the error.

To try to answer your question, if you know the setup information and want to do it manually then you can run netcardconfig and say no to the DHCP question. You could put in either of the 2 DNS servers you have when asked for the name server, or many routers let you give their local IP address as the name server and take care of that for you (they are going to have to process the packet either way). Yes, it does sound like a DNS issue, but I don't have enough info yet to know why. One speculation, and this is absolutely speculation, is that it's a problem with the DNS server conflicting with ip6 vs. ip4 packets. Rather than "fixing" this with a manual netcardconfig each time you boot, I would try to resolve it by reconfigurig the router so that it does an acceptable DHCP with Linux on boot, that way it's fixed once, works for any system and stays fixed.

If you post back, give an ifconfig output and as good of an explination of what you do all the way from booting the CD to the error. And if you have Knoppix on hard disk, try it from the CD; I don't try to fix Knoppix hard disk install problems.

[Urvang]

Thanks for the suggestion of giving no for DHCP when running netcardconfig.

This worked. My connection now works after giving Default gateway, DNS servers etc. manually.

But here is the error condition I was getting for your reference only:

I'm not at all clear on what you are doing to get this error, and what steps you have done up to whatever point you get the error.

I was getting this error when I run 'pppoeconfig' at the command prompt or equivalently, run ADSL/PPPOE configuration from KDE menu.

Thank you again!!!

[Harry Kuhman]

I was getting this error when I run 'pppoeconfig' at the command prompt or equivalently, run ADSL/PPPOE configuration from KDE menu.

When you have a router, there is no reason at all to run PPPoE software, under Linux or under Windows. The router takes care of PPPoE, you just talk normal TCP/IP ethernet packets to the router, no extra encapsulation is needed or wanted. Have you tried without PPPoE and just trying to use the network connection? DHCP should set up the connection for you just fine. If it doesn't, ifconfig should show you what is wrong, and you may be able to configure the router properly so that you don't ever need to do the manual netcardconfig. I just boot Knoppix and I'm on the Internet as soon as the boot finishes, no configuration at all.

[Urvang]

Have you tried without PPPoE and just trying to use the network connection?

of course I have...... no one will try something unless something is problematic.

Here is my 'ifconfig' output after I manually configure using 'netcardconfig' saying no to DHCP.

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:2A:BA:65:F3  
          inet addr:192.168.1.2  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.254.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::214:2aff:feba:65f3/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2235 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2079 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:1708638 (1.6 MiB)  TX bytes:446160 (435.7 KiB)
          Interrupt:20 Base address:0xc400 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:14 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:14 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:700 (700.0 b)  TX bytes:700 (700.0 b)

If it doesn't, ifconfig should show you what is wrong, and you may be able to configure the router properly so that you don't ever need to do the manual netcardconfig. I just boot Knoppix and I'm on the Internet as soon as the boot finishes, no configuration at all.

Please tell me if that is possible.

[Urvang]

here is the output of 'ifconfig' before I do 'netcardconfig' to disable DHCP:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:2A:BA:65:F3  
          inet addr:192.168.1.2  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::214:2aff:feba:65f3/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:20 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:2479 (2.4 KiB)  TX bytes:2791 (2.7 KiB)
          Interrupt:20 Base address:0xc400 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:44 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:44 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:2200 (2.1 KiB)  TX bytes:2200 (2.1 KiB)