[cobalt-users] Repeated Dial-up Connections... why?

[Rodolfo Paiz <rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK... after only a couple of days with my Qube, here is the first stumper
I've run into:

Finally troubleshot (the past tense of troubleshoot, if indeed that exists)
the external modem I'm using while my cable gets set up. Turned out to be a
bad serial cable, ugh. Now I have a curiosity:

The Qube 2 is sharing a modem connection among four computers on a LAN. The
Qube does primary DNS and DHCP; my ISP does secondary DNS. Everything seems
to work in that, when requesting Internet content from another computer, the
Qube dials and then dispenses the data. But, I do run into three concerns
that I have not been able to resolve:

* Most of the time the clients time-out on the first try because it takes
too long to get the PPP link up. Then on the second try everything's fine.
But of course, when I'm not doing this by hand and the computers want to get
something from the Internet themselves, it's no good. Does anybody have a
suggestion as to how I could improve this? The Qube 2 GUI does not really
have any configuration settings for the modem. Or should I be looking for a
way to improve the timeout behavior on the Windows clients? Sigh...

* How do I set the time-out period of idleness before the Qube hangs up the
modem connection? I only have one phone line, and in my country we currently
pay our telephone by the minute.

* The modem connects very frequently, and I don't know why. This is driving
my wife insane, since she can hear it most of the time, but it's also
costing me a fair amount of cash on my phone bill. Is there any way I can
log the traffic routed by the Qube, so I can figure out why the modem
connected, and how to make it stop...?

I realize that's three questions in one, but I really am trying... I'm a
competent Linux *user* but that certainly does not qualify me as an admin...
(as the level of my questions makes painfully obvious).

Thanks to everybody for any help they can offer. Jeff? You there? :)

------
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx