Re: Protocol error

Edward S. Marshall (emarshal@common.net)
Mon, 9 Sep 1996 14:05:01 -0500 (CDT)

On Mon, 9 Sep 1996, David S. Yun wrote:
> Our customers are getting a strange error every once in awhile: "Dail up
> networking could not negotiate a compatible set of network protocols you
> specified in the server" while dialing in.

We just finished fixing this problem; essentially, it ended up being a
cabling problem. What was happening was that three of our cables (each
one pieced together from an RJ-45 cable and two RS-232 adapter ends) were
failing to send appropriate signals from the modem to the PM, letting it
know that a user had arrived. The result? When a user connected, and
Win '95 tried to log in via PAP, it didn't get a response from the PM,
since the PM didn't acknowledge that the connection had been made. Hence,
Windows timed out, and retured a wonderfully obscure error message.

My assumption is that you'll see this error for _any_ PAP-related login
problems...someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

One related question, though: we've just migrated from some old Digital
terminal servers to the PM, and we used these patchwork cables there.
However, there was a way around the problem with the Digital servers, in
that if the user send a few carriage returns, the terminal server
acknowledged the connection. Is it possible to do something similar with
the PM? Not that I need it anymore...I just delegated those
cables/adapters to the back of one of my cabinets. Anyone want to by some
DEC RJ-45 cabling DEC or RJ-45 -> RS-232 adapters?;-)

--
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| Edward S. Marshall <emarshal@common.net> | CII Technical Administrator,     |
| http://www.common.net/~emarshal/         | Vice-President, Common Internet  |
| Finger for PGP public key.               | Inc, and Linux & LPmud (ab)user. |
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