When I last had problems with PPP, I noticed that some non-routeable IP addresses ended up getting sent out for DNS reverse lookup.
This is different than routing packets with those same (nominally) non-routeable addresses out into The Internet.
We use incredibly weak language around smartphones and point-n-click computer interfaces. It’s embarrassing.
There’s a system admin saying: It’s always DNS
But weird problems aren’t always DNS problems. Better than 50% of the time, they’re cabling problems.
I had to get my production server to clamp MSS (size of TCP data “segment” in bytes) to path MTU.
I run pacman -Syu about once a week on my Arch Linux
machines, to stay up-to-date,
avoid security problems and generally stay at the bleeding edge
of software revisions.
Today, I ran pacman -Syu on my Dell R530 server
and it updated the PPP package.
Trouble ensued.
I used to try to do one dumb/weird hardware thing every year. One year, I used a Palm Pilot as a serial terminal for a Sun SPARCStation-10. Multiple serial cable adapters and gender changers involved.
My dumb hardware stunt for October 2024: 10 USB WiFi adapters on the same laptop.
I bought a TP-Link powerline ethernet starter kit.
I’ve used Internet Software Consortium’s dhcpd for a while.
When I was setting up my new server
I found out that dhcpd was past end-of-life.
ISC wanted me to use kea instead.
John Levine, one of the OG Morlocks of the internet, notes that he has the world’s lamest content farm.
