Thus spake Mark Thornton

I ran into a strange MPIP problem and wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this.

Yesterday I decided to move the mpip server from my primarily ISDN chassis to one of my dialup chassis with less traffic. The modem MPIP clients were fine, but ISDN clients using the NetGear router began having trouble authenticating. A PPP monitor of the connection showed that it stalled for 10-15 seconds after receiving the username/password packet, then requested a disconnect. Other ISDN clients were working just fine. The problem continued through the night as more clients using the NetGear called to complain. I went back and reversed out the only change I had made in the dialup system and they were immediately able to log in.

Who requested the disconnect? Or did it just drop? I sounds, perhaps, like the system is trying to contact the MPIP server but is unable to do so...after 10-15 seconds, I would expect one side or the other to request a disconnect thinking something isn't working right. I'm not sure why this would specifically affect Netgear's, and not other multi-link dialin's that would be hitting the same chassis, but that sounds like its what's going on. Check to make sure your server has all the clients configured in it with all the right shared secrets and stuff. There's just not that much to configuring MPIP to make it work. Oh, I also am assuming that you're using Arc's for all your service with MPIP...MPIP was always broken on NETServers...save yourself a lot of time and frustration and don't even try to do MPIP on NETServers. :)

What impact could MPIP have during the login process? It was the initial channel that was failing, not the bundle.

The systems use MPIP after they get endpoint discriminator and authentication information (endpoint discriminator, EDO, information is exchanged during LCP, authentication is the usual PAP, CHAP, whatever). Multi-Link uses a combination of endpoint class, endpoint discriminator, and authentication name to determine if the new dialed in link belongs to an already existing bundle or not. If all three of those values match an already existing bundle, then the link is bundled in with that bundle...if any don't match, a new bundle is created. So, the systems transmit this information via MPIP to the MPIP server to find out if there is an already existing bundle with those three values. If the system can't contact the MPIP server, I assume something would eventually timeout and a disconnect would occur. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.