Asus RT-N66U pppoe

[Ian Barton]

I have just bought one of these. I am connecting to an ADSL line via a Billion modem/router in bridge mode. I have used the Billion for several years with a variety of software routers based on either Ubuntu or Arch and had no problems connecting. However, the Asus won't connect via pppoe and syslog contains a non specific "Chap error" message. Having tried all sorts to get it to connect and failing completely, I eventually installed Tomato, which connects straight away.

The reason I bought this router was to use OpenVPN and tether an Android phone. Unfortunately, Tomato doesn't support tethering, dd-wrt does but requires some hacking. So my question is about the Merlin pppoe code. Is it exactly the same as stock Asus and is it likely to be able to connect?

I know I could simply install Merlin and give it a go, but given the amount of trouble I had installing Tomato, I don't won't to go back to stock (Merlin) unless I am fairly sure it's going to work.

 

[RMerlin]

CHAP is the password authentication. CHAP error sounds like a username/password problem.

I use the exact same rp-pppoe and pppd version as Asus.

 

[Ian Barton]

CHAP is the password authentication. CHAP error sounds like a username/password problem.

I use the exact same rp-pppoe and pppd version as Asus.

Thanks for the feedback. I am 99.9999% sure it's not a user name password error, as I copy paste them from my ASCII file. Also I did triple check that they were correct

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks for the feedback. I am 99.9999% sure it's not a user name password error, as I copy paste them from my ASCII file. Also I did triple check that they were correct

Try leaving your modem off for 5-10 minutes, to ensure that any previous PPPOE session has expired at the provider's end. Some ISPs will also blacklist connections if you send too many within a given period of time.

Is your password only made of letters and numbers? Any special characters in it?

 

[Ian Barton]

Try leaving your modem off for 5-10 minutes, to ensure that any previous PPPOE session has expired at the provider's end. Some ISPs will also blacklist connections if you send too many within a given period of time.

Is your password only made of letters and numbers? Any special characters in it?

Sorry for delayed reply. I have been away for a couple of days. My password is set by my ISP and consists of letters, numbers and a period.

I reconnected the Billion modem to my Arch software router and set up a cron job, running script, that toggled the connection every 5 minutes for an hour. It worked perfectly, so I am as certain as I can be that it is a problem with the Asus implementation of pppoe.

 

[Chrysalis]

my asus router running a fork of merlin's firmware is behind a billion 8800nl in bridge mode and works fine for pppoe, just giving you some feedback.

 

[Ian Barton]

Thanks, I'll give it another try over the weekend. I need to get up early, so I can have a couple of hours when nobody else in the house wants to use the Internet!

 

[Ian Barton]

Thanks, I'll give it another try over the weekend. I need to get up early, so I can have a couple of hours when nobody else in the house wants to use the Internet!

Everyone except me was out this afternoon, so I installed the latest stable version of Merlin and pppoe worked first time. I have restarted the system a few times and it reconnects reliably. I have a few more questions, but I''l start separate threads for them.

 

[Aaron Ezekiel]

I'm having similar problem with an ActionTec C1000a DSL modem I'm trying to switch to bridging-only mode and use the WAN side of my Asus RT-AC66U running Merlin 380.59. I know I have the correct PPPOE username and password, but it will not connect and give me a working Internet connection.

Suggestions?

 

[Aaron Ezekiel]

I should have included some syslog:

Jun 18 16:09:19 pppd[7720]: Unable to complete PPPoE Discovery
Jun 18 16:09:19 pppd[7720]: Hangup (SIGHUP)
Jun 18 16:09:19 pppd[7720]: Terminating on signal 15
Jun 18 16:09:19 pppd[7720]: Exit.
Jun 18 16:09:19 kernel: Attempt to kill tasklet from interrupt
Jun 18 16:09:19 kernel: br0: port 1(vlan1) entering disabled state
Jun 18 16:09:19 kernel: br0: port 1(vlan1) entering learning state
Jun 18 16:09:19 kernel: br0: topology change detected, propagating
Jun 18 16:09:19 kernel: br0: port 1(vlan1) entering forwarding state
Jun 18 16:09:21 wan: mac clone: [wan0_hwaddr] == [20:76:00:3F:0C:71]
Jun 18 16:09:21 kernel: Attempt to kill tasklet from interrupt
Jun 18 16:09:21 kernel: br0: port 1(vlan1) entering disabled state
Jun 18 16:09:21 kernel: br0: port 1(vlan1) entering learning state
Jun 18 16:09:21 kernel: br0: topology change detected, propagating
Jun 18 16:09:21 kernel: br0: port 1(vlan1) entering forwarding state
Jun 18 16:09:21 pppd[7769]: Plugin rp-pppoe.so loaded.
Jun 18 16:09:21 pppd[7769]: RP-PPPoE plugin version 3.11 compiled against pppd 2.4.7
Jun 18 16:09:21 pppd[7770]: pppd 2.4.7 started by admin, uid 0
Jun 18 16:09:41 rc_service: httpd 262:notify_rc reboot
Jun 18 16:09:41 dnsmasq[261]: read /etc/hosts - 5 addresses
Jun 18 16:09:41 dnsmasq[261]: read /etc/hosts.dnsmasq - 3 addresses
Jun 18 16:09:41 dnsmasq-dhcp[261]: read /etc/ethers - 4 addresses
Jun 18 16:09:41 pppd[7770]: Unable to complete PPPoE Discovery
Jun 18 16:09:41 pppd[7770]: Hangup (SIGHUP)
Jun 18 16:09:41 pppd[7770]: Terminating on signal 15
Jun 18 16:09:41 pppd[7770]: Exit.

...

Jun 20 16:38:47 pppd[2079]: Unable to complete PPPoE Discovery
Jun 20 16:38:47 pppd[2079]: Hangup (SIGHUP)
Jun 20 16:38:47 pppd[2079]: Terminating on signal 15
Jun 20 16:38:47 pppd[2079]: Exit.

...

Jun 20 16:47:42 wan: mac clone: [wan0_hwaddr] == [B8:F6:B1:15:E0:BD]
Jun 20 16:47:42 pppd[2215]: Plugin rp-pppoe.so loaded.
Jun 20 16:47:42 pppd[2215]: RP-PPPoE plugin version 3.11 compiled against pppd 2.4.7
Jun 20 16:47:42 pppd[2216]: pppd 2.4.7 started by admin, uid 0
Jun 20 16:47:56 WAN Connection: Fail to connect with some issues.
Jun 20 16:47:59 rc_service: httpd 256:notify_rc reboot
Jun 20 16:47:59 dnsmasq[255]: read /etc/hosts - 5 addresses
Jun 20 16:47:59 dnsmasq[255]: read /etc/hosts.dnsmasq - 3 addresses
Jun 20 16:47:59 dnsmasq-dhcp[255]: read /etc/ethers - 4 addresses
Jun 20 16:47:59 pppd[2216]: Unable to complete PPPoE Discovery
Jun 20 16:47:59 pppd[2216]: Hangup (SIGHUP)
Jun 20 16:47:59 pppd[2216]: Terminating on signal 15
Jun 20 16:47:59 pppd[2216]: Exit.

 

[RMerlin]

The router cannot see any PPPoE service on your line. Check the modem configuration.

 

[Aaron Ezekiel]

Odd! I set it to transparent bridging and rebooted. It appears to be in bridging mode, but you can't really tell much, since you can't reach it's web interface, except to reset back to router mode and reboot.

Any ideas what I might check there? Firewall? I have one port forward: send everything to my Asus router for all ports. But I think neither firewall or port forwards should be active in bridging mode....

Do you think I might need a longer delay to get old connection released, or find a way to release the DHCP IP address?

 

[RMerlin]

It's not related to your router configuration, as long you are really using a PPPoE service with your ISP. You'll have to contact your ISP to check with them how to configure the modem.

 

[Aaron Ezekiel]

I should have written this long ago when I resolved my Centurylink/ActionTec C1000A problem:

There is a bug in the CenturyLink-branded ActionTec C1000A (maybe in all ActionTec C1000A versions?) which I found mentioned in an obscure posting after much searching. The ActionTec must be off and get rebooted AFTER my Asus RT-AC66U router is up and sending the WAN-side authentication request. Then the ActionTec in bridging mode will "see" and pass on the username/password pair for PPPOE to the CenturyLink DHCP server so it can issue a WAN-side IP address. Weird, huh?

Unfortunately, I have lost the link to the site and post mentioning the ActionTec bug noted above, so I'm unable to credit the source who helped me solve this problem.