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Hello Fuzzy Fox and List...!

Fuzzy Fox wrote:

> Allen Brandt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > I can browse the internet from the masq-client no problemo.
> > BUT some websites do not come through.
>
> I think you have correctly determined that this is an MTU issue.
>
> > I tried an MTU value of 1460, 1490, 1492 and just for fun 1500 and
> > none of them work.  I can't ping www.morningstar.com (my chosen
> > non-reachable website - works with a direct NT4 internet connection
> > fine) from the masq-server.
>
> Do you mean to say that you are able to "ping www.morningstar.com" and
> get a response when using a direct NT4 connection?  I cannot get a ping
> response from them, ever, but I can open web pages from the site.  I
> don't think you should depend on "ping" to tell you about your
> connectivity to remote internet sites.  Too many sites block ICMP (which
> blocks ping).

I got it working with a value of 1490. That worked. Thanks for all the tips
everyone. I made some mistakes. I assumed you could ping www.morningstar.com and
I also did not edit the NT registry correctly. For now www.morningstar.com works
- I'll have to wait and see if other websites do not come through. Read further.

> > I tried editing /etc/ppp/options with different mru and mrt values but
> > I always get the same results.  Then, I noticed running /sbin/ifconfig
> > that the MTU was staying at 1492 for pppoe anyway.
>
> You will find that 1492 is the maximum MTU size for PPPoE.  You will not
> be able to set it larger than that.
>
> > Only running the command "/sbin/ifconfig ppp0 mtu 1500" would change
> > the value listed.
>
> You will find that this does not work.  You see, PPPoE incurs a certain
> amount of overhead (eight bytes) per packet.  Since the largest ethernet
> packet permitted is 1500 bytes, this means the largest PPPoE packet is
> eight bytes less than that, or 1492 bytes.
>
> Coming back to the comment about Morningstar blocking ICMP, this causes
> them to fail to realize that they cannot send you a full-sized 1500 byte
> packet, because they block the ICMP responses that your PPP gateway
> sends back to them, telling them the packets are too large.  Not all
> sites try to send full-size packets, and not all sites block ICMP, which
> is why some web sites work, and others do not.
>
> You can work around this by changing the MTU not of your gateway Linux
> box, but the MTU of your ethernet interfaces BEHIND the gateway.  That
> is, on your private-net Windows or Linux boxes which use the gateway as
> their default route.

Right now the linux box is set at 1490 as well as the NT box. Should I remove
the 1490 on the Linux box and see if it works?

> But that is note a useful method for many people.
>
> Your best hope is to implement TCPMSS clamping, which causes your
> gateway to mangle outgoing connection requests, to inform remote sites
> that they should not send packets that are too large.  My research
> suggests that the iptables command:
>
>     iptables -I FORWARD -p tcp -j TCPMSS --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -j TCPMSS \
>         --clamp-mss-to-pmtu
>
> will do the trick.  However, I have not yet implemented iptables as my
> own firewall solution, so I have not been able to test this.  Perhaps
> others on this list can verify the correct command, and where to insert
> it in your rc.firewall script.

iptables is not available on my linux box. I think that is for the 2.4 Kernels.
I have a 2.2 Kernel.

> --
>    [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Fuzzy Fox)     || "Good judgment comes from experience.
> sometimes known as David DeSimone  ||  Experience comes from bad judgment."

Thanks for all the useful information and explanations. I understand a lot
better and things are working (for now!)

ciao
Allen Brandt

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