# sagem fast800 : how do i connect to the internet?

## justinkent

hi there.. i have a pc dual booting windows and gentoo. i have installed the eagle driver for the sagem modem in linux and followed the directions to connect to the internet but nothing happens. The lights are on on the modem. i then tried using adsl-start but this caused a timeout error. would anyone know what i am doing wrong here? 

thx  :Shocked: 

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## Pink

I had the exact same problem, my ISP provided the Sagem 800 with my broadband and I never managed to get it going. (I even had a friend translate the French posts as they have a lot concerning this modem).

Following the instructions doesn't seem to work in this case...

Not the answer you are after but I went and got myself a cheap router (£40.00, Zoom I think) and haven't looked back as I now net all my home pcs and macs and laptops through that as well (fairly easy as they all run Gentoo!)

Anyway, hope that helps you   :Confused: 

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## justinkent

what does the router do? do you use it instead of the modem?

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## Petrol

 *justinkent wrote:*   

> hi there.. i have a pc dual booting windows and gentoo. i have installed the eagle driver for the sagem modem in linux and followed the directions to connect to the internet but nothing happens. The lights are on on the modem. i then tried using adsl-start but this caused a timeout error. would anyone know what i am doing wrong here? 
> 
> 

 

I think that you should check /etc/analog/adiusbadsl.conf file, and "VPI" entry in it.

You have to enter correct value for "VPI" (which probably depends on country).

It is also possible that you have wrong usernames or passwords in /etc/ppp/options.adsl or /etc/ppp/chap-secrets files.

You may run "tcpdump" utility and watch traffic on interface eth0 (if your modem is visible as eth0). When I had wrong "VPI" value, I was only sending packets, but none arrived.

After correction of VPI, traffic was bidirectional, and after few seconds interface ppp0 appeared  :Wink: 

Petrol

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## justinkent

oh cool that sounds promising! is the VPI the number the modem uses to connect? in windows it says dialing 8,35 so would that be the VPI?

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## Pink

Unfortunately, the VPI didn't make any difference in my case; for the UK it is 0, and the VCI 38.

Give it a go though, I hope you get it working  :Wink: 

As for the router, my one is a X3 Zoom ADSL modem/gateway/router, and it acts the same way as a modem but also has connections for an ethernet cable. 

You simply plug in the phone/ADSL line into it and configure as per the manual (ISP username and password, etc). My one also has an ethernet connection available, depending on how you set it up (dhcp or static ip address) depends on how the file sharing, etc between computers occurs, my one then goes to a hub, with 8 cinnections, which all my computers link to.

The documentation is excellent with it. Try a search on google for routers and a plethora of pages comes up. Happy hunting!

[Edit] Changed the 8 ethernet connections to an ethernet  connection, and informed you it then goes into a hub (with the 8 connections). Could be a bit embarrasing if I told you the wrong thing!   :Embarassed:  [/Edit]Last edited by Pink on Wed Oct 29, 2003 8:21 am; edited 1 time in total

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## Petrol

 *justinkent wrote:*   

> is the VPI the number the modem uses to connect? in windows it says dialing 8,35 so would that be the VPI?

 

VPI mean "virtual path identifier" in ATM. And VCI mean "virtual channel identifier".

Perhaps your Windows is using VPI=00000008 and VCI=00000035 ?

If I would be you, I would try to set these values.

 *PickledOnion wrote:*   

> Unfortunately, the VPI didn't make any difference in my case; for the UK it is 0, and the VCI 38. 

 

Hmm, it sounds bad. I have no idea what else may be tried here...  :Sad: 

Petrol

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## justinkent

thanks for ur help guys but i think we can safely say that the sagem fast800 is crap and no wonder theyre free when u sign up for broadband! im gonna go out and buy that zoom x3 model tomorrow and curse sagem for the rest of my life!

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## Petrol

 *justinkent wrote:*   

> thanks for ur help guys but i think we can safely say that the sagem fast800 is crap and no wonder theyre free when u sign up for broadband! im gonna go out and buy that zoom x3 model tomorrow and curse sagem for the rest of my life!

 

Yes! It is crap, but sometimes it works  :Wink: 

And here (in Poland) I had to pay for it when I signed up for ADSL (as I remember)  :Sad: 

Petrol

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## dhalsiim

Tell us what were the results after you bought your router justinkent.

If I buy the router too, is it guaranteed to work with my ISP? I don't know much about ADSL or stuff, but from what I've heard you should have a compatible modem (or a modem that has been approved by your ISP to work with it). Does the same go for a router? Could you give us a link to the router that you bought? How many ports does it have? Is it 10/100?

Don't routers have a built-in firewall. What if you're hosting any services on your PC, don't they get blocked? Can you turn off the firewall? How is a router different from an Ethernet-ADSL modem. Anyone could explain a bit  :Smile: . Thanks in advance.

--dhalsiim

EDIT: My ISP uses PPPoA LLC encapsulation. It also uses Routed 1483 (that's DHCP to obtain an IP). I hope that's supported by the router  :Wink: 

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## dhalsiim

Like no one has used a router before and couldn't answer the questions above. Come on :\ I expected an answer in about half an hour, it's been over a day now I guess  :Razz: .

--dhalsiim

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## Petrol

 *dhalsiim wrote:*   

> Like no one has used a router before and couldn't answer the questions above. Come on :\ I expected an answer in about half an hour, it's been over a day now I guess .
> 
> 

 

My Sagem is still working, so I don't need to buy the router  :Smile: 

And I have no experience with ADSL routers.

P.

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## dhalsiim

Looks like PickledOnion has abandoned the topic :\. Hope he comes back and answers few of the above questions.  :Smile: 

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## Pink

No I haven't abandoned it, I just have a day job   :Shocked: 

As much as I know is this:

The modem/router (in my case the Zoom ADSL modem), acts as an ADSL modem, it should work on every ISP as all it does is send your username and password to the ISP to allow the connection to be established, just like any dial-up modem can be used for a dial-up ISP.

What makes it a router is the ethernet socket. You can assign the modem a unique IP address, for example: 192.168.0.1.

This then goes to a hub where all your other computers are linked to. They can have addresses such as :

192.168.0.2

192.168.0.3, etc.

They can use the modem as a gateway to access the internet directly (not the most secure way of doing things but it saves having one computer on the whole time as a server   :Wink:  )

That is how I have my setup working and providing each computer has a firewall you should be ok. I only have one computer on at once, except when sharing files directly, so my security concerns are not as great as if I was using a newtwork all the time.

HTH, if you want more technical advice, I would suggest starting a new topic, but please ask if you want more help; that's what we are here for...

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## justinkent

ok i have finally got the zoom x3 working under gentoo! 

i had a problem with the realtek ethernet card which took me ages to figure out!

anyway, the zoom x3 is fantastic!! thanks for recommending it and thanks for your help guys.

as for a router, i dont think you need one unless you have a network, i am just using a standalone pc but if you want more than one pc to access the net through one connection then the router lets you do it by sorting out which signals are going to which pc. I dont know if they are guaranteed to work with your isp, but you will still need a modem in the first place. the zoom has a router built in.

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## dhalsiim

PickledOnion awesome man  :Very Happy: !! That's one happy news I've heard in ages. You sure answered all the questions. I'm gonna go ahead and buy the modem too. You mentioned it was worth 40 pounds or so, I just checked online and it costs 88 pounds    :Crying or Very sad:  *sniff*. Did you buy it online too or from a computer store?

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## Pink

I got mine some time ago from a computer shop, just a local one but looking around, they do seem to have jumped in price.

One last thing, make sure you can connect the modem/router to your computer/hub via the ethernet cable as (in my experience) Linux does have some problems with usb only modems. (Some Zoom modems are usb only).

Anyway, good luck.

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## justinkent

i got mine from pc world for 79.99 , i bought an ethernet card too which was a tenner

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## sparklesdan

 *dhalsiim wrote:*   

> PickledOnion awesome man :D!! That's one happy news I've heard in ages. You sure answered all the questions. I'm gonna go ahead and buy the modem too. You mentioned it was worth 40 pounds or so, I just checked online and it costs 88 pounds   :cry: *sniff*. Did you buy it online too or from a computer store?

 

If you're after a router I reccomend the conexant AMX-CA61. You can pick it up at Dabs for about £40 (link:dabs.com) for a single port model (which is fine if you already have a hub) and a little bit more for a 4 port.

When I bought it I was intending to plug it straight into a router and run my own firewall, but it pretty much does everything I could want on its own (port forwarding, firewalling, NAT, DNS forwarding, etc). Infact the only service it would normally run that it's not doing on my network is DHCP as I wanted to be able to configure static IP's via my DHCP server.

You can even flash upgrade the firmware if you want (although I think a win98 machine may be needed for this purpose).

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## dhalsiim

Cool I can finally enjoy the fruits of a DSL connection without worrying about drivers and stuff  :Wink: . One last thing, I totally forgot   :Shocked: , how would I connect the router to multiple computers if it has only 1 ethernet port? One computer will be connected to that port, what about the other computers? If the router doesn't have more than 1 port, that means I'll have to have another NIC in the present computer, connected to a switch/hub which will be connected to other computers. Doesn't that defeat the idea of not having 1 computer open all the time for an Internet connection?

EDIT: HAHAHAHHA how stupid of me. I started laughing the moment I saw the message "Your message has been posted". You would connect the router to a switch, and from the switch all the computers would take advantage of the internet connection.  :Very Happy:  This has been said above too. Man I'm the king of n00bs   :Embarassed:  Thanks guys. This has been really helpful.

--dhalsiim

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