FreeBSD & Alcatel SpeedTouch USB

I'm through ADSL with a Alcatal SpeedTouch USB modem, connected to a FreeBSD (4.7, currently upgrading to 4.8) box that I use as a gateway. I'm using the drivers found at http://www.xsproject.org/speedtouch .

Connecting to the internet goes well, but my connection keeps dieing on my. As far as I can see, the amount of disconnections has something to do with uploading data. Sometimes I won't get disconnected for days, but there are several ways to increase the chance of getting disconnected.

SSHing from outside my network to my place is probably the best way to disconnect me. Two out of five times I SSH to my place (from school, for exampe) the SSH connection will die on me after a few minutes connection. Back at home I find my gateway disconnected from the internet.

Using p2p clients like KazaA is another way of increasing the possibility that I get disconnected, although this isn't such a sure method as using SSH. Finally, once every few hours (not a set amount of hours, quite randomly) of webbrowsing will disconnect me as well.

Once disconnected, I can killall ppp and pppoa2, and restart ppp to get my connection back.

Does this sound familliar to anyone? All suggestions appreciated (changing modems is not an option :P )

I haven't heard of this particular problem with the speedtouch modems but I've heard of others. Seems to be allot of info for you here. http://security.sdsc.edu/self-help/alcatel/

Too much for me to go through, but some of the info may void your warranty.( So it must be good. hehehe) And they have utilities to fiddle with your modem directly.

I'll keep an eye for more. :)

Sadly, 95% of the information about Alcatal ASDL SpeedTouch modems concerns the ADSL-Ethernet routers. I'm still bashing my head into walls for being so 'smart' to buy the USB version.