Once I managed to get the necessary information for configuring my Speedtouch 350 DSL modem (see part 1), the next logical thing to do was to start using it. Or at least try to.
The first problem was that Belgacom apparently never sent me the letter containing the user name and password that I was supposed to use for accessing their services. After spending a few minutes on the phone (that music sounds familiar) I got a login and password that I could use. Well, that’s what I thought. I learned later that what I got was not the login/password pair that I asked for, but just a pair of passwords (for PPPoE and for POP). No login. Doh!
My second call to the support center (ah, that music again!) was barely more successful: this time I got a user name and a (new) password, but again I discovered later that the user name that I got was incomplete (last characters missing).
The third call was more interesting. After 20 minutes of music (I really know it by now), a technician told me about the missing characters in my user name and asked me to try logging in while he was monitoring their side of the DSL line. This time, the PPP authentication was successful but then the PPP connection went down immediately after that. Strange! The modem re-tried a few seconds later, with the same results. And again, and again… After a few more minutes of debugging, he told me that he was resetting their card and asked me to power-cycle my modem. I did that and when the line came back, the connection worked and I was able to access the Internet. Oh joy! But I also noticed something else while looking at the system log of the modem: the connection speed after the reset had dropped from 3 Mbps to 1 Mbps. I mentioned that to the guy, who said that it was normal. Ah well, at least the ADSL connection was usable so I was happy (after wasting two hours on that).
According to a colleague who had a similar experience, the reason why my line went down immediately after a successful authentication was related to the 3 Mbps. By default, the DSL access is configured for 384K/3M up/down. But the offer that I had accepted had a cap at 1 Mbps (apparently, because I never got the letter with the details of the offer). Although the telco part of Belgacom handling the DSL access was happy to let me in with 3 Mbps, the ISP part of the company was not happy with that and dropped the connection immediately. That could make sense, but I am still wondering why the access line had not been configured correctly on their side in the first place and why it took so long for the problem to be identified. Ah well, at least I can use my connection now… And I am glad that I could do all the tests using the built-in web interface of the modem over Ethernet instead of USB. I’m wondering what would have happened if they had required me to use some Windows software for configuring the stuff.