TransACT network

[Kim Holburn]

One of the techs told me it would be in the reserved ip space 
10.x.x.x so I tried firing of a few (thousand;-) pings but got no 
response.  If anyone wants to try grabbing a 10.x.x.x ip number 
sometime and see if we can exchange ICMP packets;-)

At 7:14 AM +1000 28/9/2001, <andrew at bishop.dropbear.id.au> wrote:
>On Fri, 28 Sep 2001 jeremy at itassist.net.au wrote:
>
>>  Woo hoo.  Just got hooked up today.  Now for the big question... what do
>>  I do with it?
>
>Ummm... Watch the non-stop infomercials on channel 5?

He also told me they were going to use macrovision to stop anyone 
recording video.  Good move:-(

>
>>  I haven't got an account with an ISP yet because I had been told that I
>>  could communicate with other people on the Transact network but I can't
>>  find any doco.  Could someone point me the right way?
>
>I got hooked up 4 months ago now, and I've been asking them about that
>ever since.  Last I heard, the internal network feature is still "coming
>real soon now".
>
>While on the topic of transact isps, let me just add that I signed up with
>netspeed, but only because they were the only isp available when I
>connected.  Stay away from them.  They suck.  I'll save the lengthy
>description of how they suck for another day.  Back on topic now...
>
>You know they use PPPoE, right?  When I signed up, they gave me a cd with
>a windows PPPoE client on it (which I never installed), and a letter
>telling me that if I ran MacOS, or "any other non-windows OS", I should
>contact them for the appropriate version of the software.  Well, I did
>that, just to see what they gave me, (and installed roaring penguin
>while waiting for a reasponse), and got an email back from Someone
>With A Clue pointing me to roaringpenguin.org.  Useless information for
>me, but it's always nice to hear that a company you're dealing with has
>Someone With A Clue on their staff.  Anyway, without a PPPoE client, all
>you can do is plug a serial cable into that settop box they gave you and
>watch its boot messages scroll past every time you pull the plug and plug
>it back in (9600, 8N1, and if you can find a working username/password to
>log into it, let me know :-)
>
>There have been several talks given by the transact people (one of them at
>clug even), and I've managed to miss every single one.  However, leaving a
>tcpdump running on the relevent interface has convinced me that I'm on a
>switched network (I never see traffic headed for anyone else), and the
>only thing I can talk to directly is one bloody big router (when I send
>out PADI packets (PPPoE discovery packets - the first "who is out there
>that's willing to talk to me" step in establishing a PPPoE connection), I
>only get one response (despite the fact that there's supposed to be more
>than one ISP on transact now), and I never see any incoming PADIs).
>
>So, apparently all you can do is talk PPPoE to the router - and it works
>out who to forward your connection to depending on how you authenticate
>yourself (the "username" I supply during PAP authentication includes the
>name of my isp).
>
>I've made a point of asking about the alleged internal network transact
>offers every time I've spoken to them about anything (which has been at
>least once a month, as they have yet to send me a bill for the right
>amount... but they still manage to take only the right amount of money
>from my account each month, so it could be worse...).  I'm told every time
>that "we're still working on implementing that".
>
>The little else I've gleaned from the occasional time I've got through to
>someone who actually knows something about the system there amounts to:
>when it's implemented, it will work just like another isp - you disconnect
>form your real isp, connect to it, supply a different PAP
>username/password, and you're put on a network with everyone else
>connected to that "isp" (and maybe you'll also be able to access other
>servers that are connect to transact's backbone (e.g. anu), if they can
>work out how to do that).  Of course, all those instructions are assuming
>you're running windows - all transact's customers are, right?  With a bit
>of luck, us linux users will be able to connect to both simultaneously
>(see the -U option to pppoe).
>
>So... did they tell you that there was an internal network you could
>connect to now?  Hassle them over it, and I'll join you in hassling them.
>I've been letting it slide just because nobody else I know is on transact
>yet, so there's nobody I'd need to talk to.
>
>Andrew


-- 
--
Kim Holburn  Network Consultant  P/F: +61 2 61258620 M: +61 0417820641
Email: kim.holburn at anu.edu.au - PGP Public Key on request

Life is complex - It has real and imaginary parts.
      Andrea Leistra (rec.arts.sf.written.Robert-jordan)