Overview

Solstice PPP is an implementation of the Point-to-Point Protocol. It is used to connect a client machine to a public or private telephone network through a modem, and to initiate calls to one server at a time. You can then run common network applications, such as mailtool(1) or the Netscape^TM web browser, to access the resources of your remote office or Internet provider.

If you have not installed the software license system for Solstice PPP, you are limited to a single modem connection. You can still initiate calls to multiple remote servers; however, you can only communicate with one remote server at a time. If you have installed the software license system for Solstice PPP, you can make multiple modem connections; therefore, you can initiate several calls to remote servers simultaneously. See Solstice PPP 3.0.1 Installation Guide and Release Notes or the Solaris Server Intranet Extension 1.5 Installation Library for instructions on how to obtain and install a license for this product.

Figure 1-1 shows a typical configuration, with a Solstice PPP client connected to an office server. The server may also be running Solstice PPP, or it may be using some other implementation of the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) that allows it to route IP traffic.

Your system administrator or Internet provider must configure the server to accept calls from the client, and must provide you with the information you need to configure your client machine.

Figure 1-1 Solstice PPP Client Accessing Remote Resources

Configuring Your Solstice PPP Client

The initialization script pppinit(1m) is used to configure Solstice PPP on your client for the first time. It will prompt you for the information that describes your particular configuration, and create the relevant configuration files.

The configuration files for Solstice PPP are:

• /etc/opt/SUNWconn/ppp/ppp.conf

• /etc/opt/SUNWconn/ppp/ppp.link

Normally, you should not need to modify these files manually to configure your client; however, a list of commonly used keywords and their appropriate values is contained in Appendix A, Configuration Files and CHAT Scripts.

Connecting to a Remote Server

Once you have configured Solstice PPP on your client, you can use ppptool to display a view of the servers to which you are able to connect, and to initiate connections to these servers. See Chapter 3, Connecting your Solstice PPP Client to a Server for a detailed description of how to use ppptool.

It may take up to one minute to connect your client to a server, during which the following events occur:

1. The client dials the server, and the two modems communicate to set up the physical connection across the telephone network.

   If the speaker is enabled on your modem, you will hear the tones generated when the telephone number is dialed and the carrier signal is detected.

2. The client logs in to the server.

   Most implementations of PPP require a login phase. For Solstice PPP running on Solaris systems, this is equivalent to the UNIX login sequence. The user id and password sent to the server are contained in its CHAT script. See "CHAT Scripts" for more information.

3. The client and the server negotiate a common configuration for the PPP link between them.

   The policy is to converge the negotiation, if at all possible; however, if certain mandatory parameters, such as authentication parameters, do not match on both sides of the link, the connection will be closed automatically.