FreeBSD has a number of ways to link one computer to another. To establish a network or Internet connection through a dial-up modem, or to allow others to do so through you, requires the use of PPP or SLIP. This chapter describes setting up these modem-based communication services in detail.
After reading this chapter, you will know:
How to set up user PPP.
How to set up kernel PPP (FreeBSD 7.X only).
How to set up PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet).
How to set up PPPoA (PPP over ATM).
How to configure and set up a SLIP client and server (FreeBSD 7.X only).
Before reading this chapter, you should:
Be familiar with basic network terminology.
Understand the basics and purpose of a dialup connection and PPP and/or SLIP.
You may be wondering what the main difference is between
user PPP and kernel PPP. The answer is simple: user PPP
processes the inbound and outbound data in userland rather than
in the kernel. This is expensive in terms of copying the data
between the kernel and userland, but allows a far more
feature-rich PPP implementation. User PPP uses the
tun device to communicate with the
outside world whereas kernel PPP uses the
ppp device.
Throughout in this chapter, user PPP will simply be
referred to as ppp unless a
distinction needs to be made between it and any other PPP
software such as pppd
(FreeBSD 7.X only). Unless otherwise stated, all of the
commands explained in this chapter should be executed as
root.
All FreeBSD documents are available for download at http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/
Questions that are not answered by the
documentation may be
sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.
Send questions about this document to <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>.