On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Jeffrey Ohlmann wrote:
 
> I'm thoroughly confused.

I'm not surprised - this is a confusing topic!

> On Tue, 11 Mar 1997, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> 
> > There are two how-to kits on ftp.macbsd.com for setting up ppp. They
> > both work with dynamic addresses.
> 
> On Wed, 12 Mar 1997, era eriksson wrote:
> 
> > (dial-on-demand doesn't work with dynamic, as Paul and Bill already
> > pointed out)
> 
> 
> Is the "Bill" in era eriksson's message Bill Studenmund, or a different
> Bill?  Does or does not ppp-dod work with dynamic addressses?

Yes, the "Bill" in era's message was Bill Studenmund.  And, I'm _pretty
sure_ (but _not_ positive) that ppp-dod will _not_ work with dynamically
assigned addresses.

> Paul Goyette's read me for ppp-dod states that "you need to specify your
> own IP address and the IP address of your ISP's router.  If you don't have
> fixed values for these, you probably can't use dial-on-demand - sorry."
> Is this accurate or can I modify it as per Bill Studenmund's instructions
> ("Just don't have an IP address set in your options file and
> the other end will tell you your address.") ?

My statements are only as accurate as the man page for pppd which states:
"With this option the remote IP address must be specified by the user on
the command line or in an options file."  Based on this, Bill's
instructions won't help.

Some people have mused that _maybe_ it would work even if you just gave
pppd a dummy IP address, thinking that maybe it would somehow "correct"
itself after negotiating a real address with the remote end.  I have not
tried this, so I cannot say for sure, but I do not believe that this will
work, mostly because pppd established its routing table entries when the
pppd process is started, not when the connection is made.  So, even if it
were able to negotiate a different address at connect time, the routing
table would _probably_ be incorrect.

Of course, if you want to put some time into it, and try things out, I'd
be happy to be proven wrong, and I promise I'll change my How-To document
immediately!  :)

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