Contents
Introduction.
About Onetel.
Supported Dialup Types.
Phone Numbers.
Supported Protocols.
Authentication.
Connect Script.
Standard Service Settings.
Example 1 - Redhat Linux and pppd and chat.
Example 2 - Redhat Linux and wvdial.
Links.

Introduction.
I recently had a bit of trouble getting connected to the Internet with the UK ISP Onetel using ISDN and Linux.
This document aims to provide basic details of how to connect to the Internet using the Onetel ISP's dialup service with non-standard and unsupported systems.
It is aimed at users who pretty much know what they are doing but can't get the information they need.
This document will not cover broadband connections until British Telecom bring my village out of the dark ages.
[ update: we have 2MB broadband in our village now but I dropped Onetel and now use Demon who provide much more free online support and information.]

About Onetel
Onetel are a telecoms provider in the United Kingdom.
They provide a reasonable unmetered Internet dial-up service for £12.99 per month.

There are the usual restrictions on connection use (connection is cut off after ten minutes inactivity or two hours) but you can re-connect immediately and there is no other (apparent) usage limit. The service is therefore useless for online gaming but fine for most other stuff so long as any big downloads are on a server that can resume broken downloads and you don't mind being cut off every two hours. I can live with this (just) but many will hate this.

You can connect with POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) or ISDN.
You need to sign up as a Onetel phone user but that does not cost extra (and may actually save you money).

However, their support is geared to M&M (Micro$oft and Mac) on an analogue phone line. If you are using ISDN or an unsupported Operating System (anything other than M&M) you may not get much help and their online support is almost non-existant, I assume to drive users to their 50p-per-minute help lines.

It took me a week to get a connection simply because I did not get the relevent information.
Here is as much as I could find or work out for myself - hope it helps.

Supported Dial-up Types
Onetel use v90 modems - you can dial in with most types of modem and single channel (64kbps) ISDN.

Phone Numbers
Dial-up numbers depend on geographical location and your phone line provider (BT or cable). Onetel can tell you which number to use, check their web site; they have an online number finder (broken when I tried to use it) and a support hotline (expensive and based in India by the sounds of it).

Protocols
ISDN connection uses Synchronous Transparent PPP (I think with v120 speed negotiation and v42bis data compression). The modem protocols all seem pretty standard, if anyone has more detail on modem dial-up please let me know as I can only diagnose and test ISDN from here.

My ISDN Terminal Adapter (and every other ISP I have used) defaults to Asynchronous PPP which is why I had so much trouble getting connected. :-)

Authentication
Firstly you can only get a connection if Onetel's system recognises your phone number.
You need outgoing CLI (Caller Line Identification) activated on your phone/ISDN line so Onetel's system can authenticate the origin of the call.
Hint: To find out if you have CLI simply call a mobile phone using your modem or TA. If your number is displayed on the mobile you have CLI activated on your line. If not call your phone line provider and get it activated.

Once your phone number is verified authenticatation is by PAP (Password Authentication Protocol) or CHAP (Challange Handshake Authentication Protocol) using the username and password supplied by Onetel.

Connect Script
Onetel's system requires your modem/TA to send a 1 character (numeral one) when the connection is established to start the PPP protocol.
This simple script should work with a dial-up program like chat but I'd urge you to add some abort conditions and modem/TA initialization strings. Check how your modem reports connections too.

"" ATZ OK ATDTDIALUP_NUMBER CONNECT 1

where DIALUP_NUMBER is the number given to you by Onetel. You may have to change CONNECT too if your modem reports establishing a connection differently.

Standard Service Settings
If there are two servers listed, one ending .com and one ending .net.uk use the one that matches the end of your onetel e-mail address.

Example 1: Redhat Linux and pppd and chat.
This is the command I use to establish a PPP connection to the Internet using Onetel. Values that need replaced are shown in bold. You may have to tweak other paths, values and options depending on your setup.

/usr/sbin/pppd crtscts user USERNAME modem debug updetach asyncmap 0 mtu 1500 mru 1500 defaultroute connect '/usr/sbin/chat -t 4 ECHO ON ABORT "NO CARRIER" ABORT "NO DIALTONE" ABORT "BUSY" ABORT "ERROR" "" ATZ OK INIT_STRING OK ATDTDIALUP_NUMBER CONNECT 1' MODEM_DEVICE 115200

The file /etc/ppp/chap-secrets and/or /etc/ppp/pap-secrets (or wherever pppd looks for these files on your system) should contain a line like this

USERNAME * PASSWORD

with tabs (not spaces) between the entries.

pppd should create a file somewhere with it's process id, you can use this to check if pppd is running (ie. you are connected to the Internet.) You can also use it to kill your connection..

#> kill `cat /var/run/ppp0.pid`

..note the use of `backticks` not 'single quotes'.

BTW: If you add the persist option to the pppd command pppd tries to reconnect if your connection gets cut off. Don't misuse this feature. Killing the pppd process stops the reconnection attempts.

Example 2: Redhat Linux and wvdial.
If you have not done so run wvdialconf to create a basic configuration file.
Wvdial cannot work out how to start a PPP connection to Onetel so you have to use a custom PPPD startup script..

#!/bin/sh
# wvdial pppd replacement for onetel
# put this script at /usr/local/bin/onetel_connect (or wherever you like)
# must be executable to the user running wvdial
pppd "$@" connect 'chat "" 1'

add a [ONETEL] section to /etc/wvdial.conf..

[ONETEL]
Modem = MODEM_DEVICE
Init = INIT_STRING
Phone = DIALUP-NUMBER
Username = USERNAME
Password = PASSWORD
Carrier Check = Yes
New PPPD = Yes
PPPD Path = /usr/local/bin/onetel_connect

Make sure any users who will be running vwdial have read/write access to /etc/ppp/chap-secrets (and/or /etc/ppp/pap-secrets) and that 'PPPD' Path points to the script above. Now do..

#> wvdial ONETEL

to connect.

Links
Onetel Homepage - http://www.onetel.co.uk
Onetel Internet Support - http://www.onetel.co.uk/support/
Onetel Mailzone (user webmail) - http://webmail.onetel.net.uk/wm