How can I make e-smith accept a passive ISDN-Card as DialOut-Device?


Klaus Mueller (kjm (at) internet-sicherheit.net)

v0.4, 2000-10-19

Disclaimer
Use this documentation at your own risk. I will not accept any responsibility for any incorrect information within this document, nor for any damage it might cause when applied. It worked for me and it should work for you.

Copyright
Copyright (C) 2000 Klaus Mueller. Permission to distribute and modify this document is granted under the GNU General Public License.

Current version
The most current version of this document can be obtained from http://internet-sicherheit.net/isdn4es-howto.html

Introduction
One of the few things I missed in e-smith was its non-present support for passive ISDN cards. Now, I've been told that in most parts of the world ISDN does not have such a wide spread as it does in Germany and that external ISDN-TA could be used instead of passive cards. Still I think there are many users who would like to use a passive ISDN card because of the simple fact that they are cheaper than the external ones (ISDN-TA: around 150 Euro, passive PCI-ISDN card: around 70 Euro).

So - here's how it works: I found that the easiest way for doing this would be to use all features that are implemented in e-smith already to support normal modems and to use the modem emulation feature of isdn4linux. This gives you all the comfort for modem operation (dialing policies etc.) without setting that all up by yourself.

All you need is:

Credits
Cheers to the folks at isdn4linux and also to the e-smith people!

Remark
This document describes how support for passive ISDN cards can be intergated into e-smith making only minor modifications to the original e-smith distribution. The effort for integrating these changes into the distribution itself would not be very high. The people at e-smith think that there are not enough potiential users missing support for passive ISDN cards. They may be right. Letting them or me know that you do have use for this feature and that it means added value for the purpose you use e-smith for might make them change their minds someday. Thank you for reading.

Survey
The guys at e-smith have started a survey on types of internet connections. Please participate in their survey and tell them what kind of internet connection you are using.

Version history
v0.1 2000-07-06 initial release
v0.2 2000-07-20 modification to make isdn4es work with the final version of es4
v0.3 2000-08-30 some minor changes to clarify some misunderstandable passages
v0.4 2000-10-19 minor improvements based on user-feedback, added settings for AVM Fritz! PCI

Here my settings for the cards that I tested: