Broadband Pacenet

From GLUG-BOM

ponygirls met art julia here movie edit pro 2005 review .php link jonah falcon video san francisco movie theaters chihuahua mexico meninpain free movie You are here : Main Page > Howtos > Connecting to Broadband Pacenet

Pacenet is an ISP providing 'always-on' Internet services through Local Area Networks in many localities in the western suburbs. It uses RASPPPOE to provide access control based on speed, transferred data and usage time. A custom dialer is provided for Windows users. This dialer encrypts the password for obvious reasons. However, this encryption does not allow us to use Pacenet services as conveniently on GNU/Linux. Understand this "encryption" and you are on the highway to the net!

As of March 2007, I have used Pacenet in Ubuntu for ten months and would like to document the procedure here. It has also been used on Knoppix and DSL live distributions. It should work on other Debian based distros as well.

Contents

[edit]

Understanding the Password Encoding Algorithm

Note: This topic is controversial. I request would-be editors to refrain from 
editing it straight away. Let's have a discussion first, shall we?

If you want to do it the proper way, here's how: Get a linuxuser account from Pacenet Customer Care by calling 26741122. Your new userID will be your current ID with "@linuxuser" appended to it. eg your current ID is "john" your new linux user ID will be "john@linuxuser". Proceed as normal with the rest of the document.

This procedure is based on the algorithm provided here or here. I have used only the initial numeric passwords given by Pacenet which work very well with this algorithm. I have no idea what will happen if the password contains a zero or non-numeric character. (I believe nothing should happen. -- yesudeep)

In brief, if your password is 123, then your encoded password is 049110021533. Here's how: 

49x1 = 049 > 0491
50x2 = 100 > 1002
51x3 = 153 > 1533

The first operands are the ascii values of the second operands.

Some list members have mentioned using Ethereal to sniff out the password while using Windows. More documentation is needed on that.

Here is some Python code to obtain the encoded password. Put it in a file called 'pacenet-password.py: 

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# pacenet-password.py
# Placed into public domain by Yesudeep Mangalapilly.

import random
import sys

def get_encoded_password(password=""):
    """Obtains the pacenet encoded password to be used on Linux. """
    encoded_parts = []
    for c in password:
        multiplier = random.randrange(1, 6)
        value = ord(c) * multiplier
        encoded_parts.append('%03d%d' % (value, multiplier, ))
    return "".join(encoded_parts)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    if len(sys.argv) > 1:
        password = sys.argv[1]
        print get_encoded_password(password)
    else:
        print 'Usage: pacenet-password.py <password>'

You will need Python 2.5 to run this program: 

$ python -V
Python 2.5.1

Generate your encoded password string by running it like this: 

$ python pacenet-password.py 123456
147305012555208410622164

where 123456 is an example password. Use the encoded string that is displayed as your password.

[edit]

Setting up the Connection

1. Setup your LAN card using your preferred GUI or terminal utility. I used the GUI utility System > Administration > Networking. Enter your private IP address, net mask and gateway. If DNS servers are provided, do enter them as well, though they will be updated every time you bring up the Internet connection.

2. Generate your encrypted password using the algorithm shown above. If you have an @linuxuser ID, skip this step.

3. The package pppoeconf is installed by default. If not, install it with sudo apt-get install pppoeconf. Then launch it. 

$ sudo pppoeconf

4. Follow the instructions. Using the defaults is a good idea - I have had no problems so far. 

Note: If you have a username@linuxuser, then use it for USERNAME (step 5) 
and enter your Pacenet account password as it is(step 6).
  1. ALL DEVICES FOUND? - All the network cards should be listed here. For a home user, there should be just one - eth0.
  2. SCANNING DEVICE - Scans for access concentrators on the network offering PPPOE services.
  3. OKAY TO MODIFY - If the file /etc/ppp/dsl-provider exists, this will come up. Back up the file and proceed.
  4. POPULAR OPTIONS - Take the defaults.
  5. ENTER USERNAME - Enter your Pacenet username. (you have read the note above, right?)
  6. ENTER PASSWORD - Key in the password that you generated in step 2. (you have read the note above, right?)
  7. USE PEER DNS - Yes, of course!
  8. LIMITED MSS PROBLEM - Keep it to Yes - the default.
  9. DONE - Select Yes to bring up the connection at boot time. No otherwise - specially if you are on a time or download limit package.
  10. ESTABLISH A CONNECTION - Your choice, depending on your package.
  11. CONNECTION INITIATED - If selected Yes in the previous step.

5. The connection can be brought up by pon dsl-provider and brought down by poff dsl-provider or poff -a. You can use plog to see the last few log messages regarding the PPP connection i.e. your net connection. ifconfig ppp0 shows you the interface details.

6. See the man pages for pppoeconf, pon, poff and plog for more details.

7. Take note of the following three files.

  1. /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider - Generated by pppoeconf, this file contains configuration details. The field user should have your username in double quotes.
  2. /etc/ppp/pap-secrets and /etc/ppp/chap-secrets - Both these files should have an entry for the user specified in /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider. The format is: 
"username" * "numeric password"

8. Use the following URL to check out your account details. It is used by the Pacenet dialer in Windows for getting all those spiffy messages. 

http://203.115.71.69:7001/mydomainWebApp/UserInfo?user=<username>

Note: This URL seems to have been disabled. While it worked, it used 
to return an XML file with lots of good information about your account.
[edit]

Renewal Of Account

Pacenet requires its users to renew their accounts every month. We have to login using a special username/password (usually managed by your local cable operator representing Pacenet) if our accounts expire. Assume that this special username/password is register/123.You will need to be root for the next few operations. 

$ sudo -s

1. Navigate to /etc/ppp/peers and copy dsl-provider 

# cp dsl-provider register
# gedit register

2. Change the value for the field user to register. Save and exit.

3. Go up one level to /etc/ppp. 

# gedit chap-secrets

4. Add an entry for username register with the encoded password as shown below. 

"register" * "049110021533"

5. Add a similar entry to /etc/ppp/pap-secrets.

6. Now you launch this connection using pon register.

[edit]

The Roaring Penguin Package

The rp-pppoe package is also available in Ubuntu. We will use it for detecting the presence of Access Concentrators on the network. Please note that this package is also capable of providing connectivity but I have not used it for that. 

$ sudo apt-get install pppoe

You will be asked if you want to replace the /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider file. Do not replace it unless you plan on using the Roaring Penguin package for connecting to the net.

Now, the following command will list the Access Concentrators available. 

$ pppoe -A
[edit]

Documentation Required

  1. Performance of the decryption algorithm if password contains characters other than numbers.
  2. Connecting using the Roaring Penguin package - specially on distros like Mandriva and Fedora Core.
Retrieved from "http://db.ilug-bom.org.in/wiki/index.php/Broadband_Pacenet"