The

User's Manual

Release 0.8.0, (C) 1999

5. Account configuration

The possibility of creating accounts is probably one of the best arguments for using kISDN, since it allows using more than one ISP in turn, each of which can be made available to users individually. Naturally you can make more than one account available to a single user. He/she will be able to choose from them later; this makes the use of different ISPs as flexible as possible.
Using an example, we will now examine the configuration of an account. Please open the 'Account' dialog; in this illustration, there are already two configured accounts, in your case, the list should be empty:
Accounting Dialog
Since version 0.5.0 kISDN features an integrated provider database. If you are lucky, your provider is already configured; This will save you most of the configuration process, you will have to enter nothing but your username and password. Click 'Database...'; in the window that appears
Provider-Datenbank
you will only have to click your way through to your provider. The preconfigured settings will be applied. After clicking 'OK' the following dialog will pop up:

Auth dialog

Enter your username and password and you are all set.
Attention: You must give users access to this account ('Users''), or else it won't show up in his(her) ISP list when kisdn is started!
If your provider is not yet available in the database, you will have to create a new account; how you can do that is thouroughly described in the following chapter.
Before you can create a new account, you will need the following pieces of information:

  • The name of your Internet Service Provider (T-Online, AOL, Compuserve etc...)
  • Its ISDN phone number (with local area number)
  • Used protocol(s)
  • Is the IP address dynamically or statically assigned? In case of a static IP: Remote IP address, Netmask and Networkaddress (if needed)
  • IP addresses of the DNS severs
  • Used authentication protocol (PAP, CHAP or none)

To be able to extend the provider database, we need your help. When you have configured your account, please fill out the form at http://kisdn.headlight.de/providerDB, the next release of kISDN will then contain your provider, as well. Please choose 'New...', a new dialog will pop up.


5.1 ISP Settings

New Account Dialog

Please enter your provider's name in the field 'Provider Name' e.g. "T-Online" or "Compuserve". In the 'Remote Phone' field, please enter your ISP's ISDN phone number and press the button 'Add'; the field will be cleared and the number you just entered will be visible in the list just below ('Phone List'). kISDN allows you to enter multiple phone numbers, since some ISP's offer different access numbers (e.g. one as a backup, if the other has technical difficulties or if it is overloaded). If you entered a wrong phone number by mistake, you can simply remove it by highlighting it in the list and pressing the 'Remove' button.

Let's go over to the technical part of the account configuration, you must now choose the network protocol. Oftentimes this information is not provided, since the provider assumes you are using Windows '95/'98 to connect to his service, using his software. kISDN must know about the type of protocol used to be usable universally.

Under 'Encapsulation' the following protocols are supported:

  • SyncPPP
  • RawIP
  • RawIP with UI Header
  • Internet Protocol
  • Cisco/HDLC Modus
  • Ethernet

The most common protocols are SyncPPP and RawIP. These are also the only ones that kISDN has been tested with. If your provider happens to use another protocol, feedback is very welcome.
The field 'Layer 2' sets the L2 protocol your provider uses, typically HDLC.
The reason for the availability of no further options for 'Layer 3' besides 'Trans' is i4l specific, but we have heard of no problems so far.
Under 'Dial Attempts' you can specify how often kISDN should retry to connect if a line is busy. Quite often a connection cannot be established right away; then this option can be very gentle to your nerves.
In addition to these options, you can modify the 'Timeout', which specifies the amount of time that kISDN will wait before disconnecting an idle line. The default value was realistically chosen (10min). In case of very short timeouts, you will have to establish connections over and over again, which can be quite costly, too.
The option 'Bundle Channels' allows the usage of both B channels for data traffic. Since this is rather expensive, this option only makes sense if data has to be transmitted very fast. Unfortunately, this feature does not work correctly with I4L, the second channel is not added automatically. Using kISDN you can add a second channel manually, the main window provides a special button.


5.2 IP Settings

Let's have a look at the next dialog 'IP'.
IP Dialog
Here you must tell kISDN how your ISP handles the IP address assignment. In most cases, the default 'Dynamic IP address' is correct. It means that the IP address is assigned at login time. In case of the less probable static IP address assignment, choose 'Static IP address' to make the fields below accessible. In the 'Local IP address' field you are asked to enter the IP address that you were assigned, under 'Remote IP Address' kISDN is interested in the ISP's internet address. If you were also given a network address, please enter it under 'Subnet Mask'.

5.3 Nameserver settings (DNS)

The next dialog is used to supply information about the so called DNS servers which are responsible for resolving hostnames:
DNS Dialog
First of all enter your ISP's domain name under 'Domain'. If you don't know it, just enter anything - an area domain for example (e.g. home.uk). kISDN will still work, only hostname completion will be unavailable (with a working configuration, computera would be expanded by kISDN to computera.home.uk). You should have been provided with two DNS server addresses by your ISP; please enter them in the field below 'IP Address' (press 'Add' after each entry to add it to the list).

5.4 Authentication

The last part of the account configuration is the authentication tab:
Authentication Dialog
Choose the authentication protocol your ISP uses to verify its users identities.
Please enter your username in the appropriate field and also your password; the password is shown unreadable ('***').
Supplying this information is absolutely necessary, even if you have chosen your ISP in the database!

5.5 Giving access to users

This dialog is used to give users access to the account.
Userfreigabe
Enter in 'User's Homedirectory' the home directories of the users that may use kISDN and add them to the list by pressing 'Add'. Existing entries can be edited using 'Edit' or deleted with 'Remove'.

5.6 Callback

Use this tab to set up callback.
Rückruf
Unfortunately, nobody in the kISDN-Team has access to a callback account, which makes creating a frontend relatively hard for us. If you are not satisfied with the kISDN's configuration, this is because we do not have enough information about it; if you have to offer an idea and/or improvement please tell us.

To use callback you will have to enable it firs (`Enable Callback'), which makes the remaining fields accessible.
First of all you must supply the incoming phone numbers (those of the Callback servers). Since these are usually the same you use to access the callback server, it should suffice to copy them, with the little difference that it is stripped of the leading '0' (you will find that this is true for incoming calls). Thus, if the incoming calls are identical with the outgoing ones, all you have to do is to check the 'Strip leading 0's from outgoing numbers' option. Obviously we don't neglect the possibility that the numbers have absolutely nothing in common, hence the option 'Other' which you can use to supply an alternative number (all other numbers will be ignored).

Next you must specify if the local computer is the client ('Local machine initiates callback') or the server ('Local machine answers callback'). Your machine is more likely the client. If that is true, 'Hangup after ... seconds' tells kISDN how long to wait before hanging up; this is important, as the callback server is the one calling back and will abort if the line is busy.
If your machine is the server, you can now specify if the call should be explicitly hung up ('Hangup before calling back'). You must also set the time waited before the callback should take place; if this option is chosen too short, it may happen that the other party has not yet hung up when you attempt the callback.

5.7 Other settings

The first button can be used to set the secure mode for incoming calls.
Sonstige Einstellungen

If you don't check the box 'Allow signalization of incoming calls', none of the users will be able to use this feature. If you do activate it, you can specify for each user in 'Users' if the feature should be available.
'ipppd' allows setting additional options for ipppd; they will only work if the current account uses syncPPP. You will probably not need these options unless you run into problems like continually being disconnected or something similar. Before changing anything here, you should know exactly what you are doing.

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T. Westheider, Ch. Demmer, Ch. Zander / January 8 1999 - kISDN Release 0.8.0