Frequently Asked Questions for Babylon 1.4
==========================================


Q.  How can a permanent connection be made at boot time?

The bdial command must be reissued until the connection is
successfully made at which time babylond can take over responsibility
for initiating redials (see the links field in babylon.conf).  Put
a line like:

	( while ! bdial site ; do sleep 5 ; done ) &

in your rc.local, which just executes bdial repeatly with a five
second pause between failed dials.


Q.  What does cause code X mean?

Babylon normally reports the cause codes in hexadecimal, in which
case you can look at the table below (only the last two digits are
significant).  For the few places where it is reported in decimal,
convert to hex first.

Cause Code	Meaning
-------------------------
	01	Unassigned number
	02	No route to specified transit network
	03	No route to destination
	06	Channel unacceptable
	10	Normal clearing
	11	User busy
	12	No user responding
	13	User alerting, no answer
	15	Call rejected
	16	Number changed
	1a	Non-selected user clearing
	1b	Destination out of order
	1c	Invalid number format
	1d	Facility rejected
	1e	Respond to status enquiry
	1f	Normal, unspecified cause
	22	No circuit available
	26	Network out of order
	29	Temporary failure
	2a	Network congestion
	2b	Access info discarded
	2c	Requested channel not available
	2d	Pre-empted
	2f	Resource unavailable, unspecified
	32	Requested facility not subscribed
	34	Outgoing call barred
	36	Incoming call barred
	39	Bearer capability not authorized
	3a	Bearer capability not available
	3f	Service not available
	41	Capability not implemented
	42	Channel not implemented
	45	Facility not implemented
	46	Only restricted digital information bearer capability is available
	4f	Service or option not implemented, unspecified
	51	Invalid call reference
	52	Channel does not exist
	53	Suspended call exists, but this call identity does not
	54	Call identity in use
	55	No call suspended
	56	Call having the requested identity has been cleared
	58	Incompatible destination
	5b	Invalid transit network selection
	5f	Invalid message unspecified
	60	Mandatory information element missing
	61	Message type non-existant or not implemented
	62	Wrong message
	63	Bad information element
	64	Invalid element contents
	65	Wrong message for state
	66	Timer expired
	67	Mandatory information element length error
	6f	Protocol error
	7f	Interworking unspecified


Q.  bdial reports a cause with 00 at the end which isn't listed in
the table above.  What does this mean?

The local system is the source of the hangup.  This should be
acommpanied by another message indicating the real source of the
problem.


Q.  My DataCommute/Plus card is failing with a cause code of ff -- help!

That is the driver's way of reporting that it doesn't know what the
cause code it should be reporting is.  The dcplus driver will log
any further indication of status it receives from the card with a
message that begins with cause_ind.


Q.  Why does bdial fail with the message 'Failed: IPCP: Peer did not
provide an IP address'?

This can happen if neither end of connection is configured to give
the other an IP address.  Look into setting the local/remote ip
fields in your babylon.conf with the addresses given to you by your
provider.


Q. Why does dialing fail with 'Failed: LCP: timed out -- no packets received'?

One possible explanation for this is that the site you're trying to dial
is not using the same format for data as your system is.  Frequently this is
caused by dialing into a site configured to use 56Kbps when setup to use
64Kbps, or vice versa.  The same thing can happen when trying to use HDLC
framing to connect with a modem.
 

Q. We are dialing into an Ascend P50/P75 router and the connection
will not do MPP (more than one link).

A. Check the revision of the Ascend firmware. We have discovered that
Ascend has solved a variety of issues with MPP in their current revisions.
While older routers will do MPP with the 1.2 Babylon series, they will
not with the 1.3 series. The reason is we are fully compliant with the 
MPP spec ratified this year by the IETF. Older version of Babylon were
not compliant to this spec and we assume the older Ascend firmware was not
either. Ascend newer versions work correctly in our testing. We used
Ascend 7.3.1 firmware with babylon 1.3.13-12 with great success.

Q. We are dialing into our ISP and the connection never completes. Bdial
always responds with "Failed: Timeout."

A. What happens usually is the negiation between Babylon and the remote
router appears to be working, however, the IP numbers are never
returned. Eventually, the connection aborts. bdial will report the
connection timed out. During our investigation of this situation we
discovered the problem was the remote router not following the PPP
spec. If the remote router is under your control, we strongly recommend
upgrading the firmware. The above FAQ question is  example
of how this can help. However, if you are calling into a large ISP,
this may not be possible. In order to break babylon to work with these
broken routers, we've added a command line switch (--broken-acfc) to work
around the problem. In most cases, this allows the connection to be
established.


