Re: OT: VSNL as compared to other ISPs

["Binand Raj S." <binand@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Suresh Ramasubramanian forced the electrons to say:
> Kingsly John rearranged electrons thusly:
> 
> >  | wvdial seems to handle it very well, from what I can see
> > hmmm... does wvdial use chat ??
>  
> it can use all three (pap, chap, chat)

Hmm... I seem to be having great fun nitpicking from Suresh's posts... ;-)

If by chat, you mean /usr/sbin/chat (or whatever), a program included
with the ppp software package, then wvdial has no need for it, since
it implements its own classes (being written in C++) to have meaningful
conversations with modems (and for all you know, with Marvin).

If by chat, you mean the kind of login-password authentication ISPs do,
then yes, wvdial does that. It can intelligently detect login and password
prompts from ISPs and send that info across.

wvdial (or any other dialling software) does not implement pap or
chap. These protocols are used after the two pppds are on talking terms
(as opposed to chat - sense 2 above), so the job of wvdial is over by
then. It is the job of the pppd daemon to do the authentication in case
of pap/chap.

Of course, wvdial appends the login id and password present in its
configuration file to /etc/ppp/pap-secrets (or chap-secrets) so that
this difference is not all that obvious to the general user.

Binand