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SmoothWall (and Alcatel's USB ADSL modem that comes with BT Openworld)


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I spent far too long messing around with other Linux distros, trying to get my ADSL connection to work before I hit gold with SmoothWall. SmoothWall is a small (26Mb) free distribution of Linux that is really good on a low-end PC used as a firewall. It's extremely easy to set up, although I had trouble discovering the right settings for my Alcatel USB ADSL modem (BTOpenworld is my ISP), which is why I've put them on this page. The current version at the time of writing was 0.9.9, so any instructions below may be specific to that version.



Settings

Once you've got SmoothWall installed, you should be able to ping it from other machines on your local network. Then connect via a web browser to port 81 of the smoothwall machine (e.g. http://192.168.15.1:81). From here, you can set up the configuration of your smoothwall installation, and (most importantly) set up the USB ADSL connection.

  1. Choose the 'Dialup' section from the menu.
  2. Click the 'usb adsl firmware upload' link near the top of the page.
  3. Download the 'mgmt.o' file that comes with the Alcatel linux drivers for the SpeedTouch (available here)
  4. Browse to the mgmt.o file and Upload it,
  5. Click the 'PPP settings' link near the top of the page.
  6. Enter the profile name as 'BT Openworld'

    In the 'telephony' section:
  7. choose the Interface "USB ADSL"
  8. set the 'computer to modem rate' to "115200" (this doesn't appear to limit your connection speed, as I get 512k bits/sec with this setting),
  9. tick the 'persistent connection' checkbox,
  10. and tick the 'connect on SmoothWall restart' checkbox

    In the 'Additional USB ADSL settings' section:
  11. set the VPI number to 0,
  12. set the VCI number to 38, (these differ from ISP to ISP, see the speedtouch FAQ for other VP/VC settings)

    In the 'Authentication' section:
  13. set the username to your full BTOpenworld username (e.g. john.smith@hg16.btinternet.com)
  14. set the password to your BT Openworld password
  15. set the Method to PAP/CHAP
  16. leave the script name blank

    In the 'DNS' section:
  17. choose Automatic
  18. enter your DNS server IP addresses (mine are 194.73.73.94 as primary and 194.72.6.57 as secondary).
Then click 'Save', reboot the machine, and you should have a working connection. SmoothWall has NAT set up automatically, so if you set the Gateway and DNS of any Windows machines to the IP of your smoothwall box then they should be able to connect to internet sites (after a reboot, of course!).



Websites

www.smoothwall.org
Alcatel website
Alcatel's Linux drivers for the Speedtouch
SpeedTouch FAQ
Author's Homepage

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28th November 2001