DSL SpeedTouch modem

This howto shows one way to get a working speedtouch USB modem. It uses the kernel driver,
not
the userspace driver. This howto assumes that your ISP uses PPPoA and not PPPoE.
Kernel modules and ppp
Make sure you have a kernel with the proper support (at least the modules
ppp_generic
,
pppoatm
,
slhc
,
atm
,
usbatm
and
speedtch
). The default Arch kernel should work.
Otherwise make sure that your kernel supports firmware loading:
$ zgrep FW_LOADER /proc/config.gz
Then
install
the
ppp
package.
The manual way
Configuring pppd
###  /etc/ppp/peers/speedtch

# To connect to using this configuration file, do
#       pppd call speedtch

lcp-echo-interval 10
lcp-echo-failure 10
noipdefault
defaultroute
user "username@ispname"
noauth
noaccomp
nopcomp
noccp
novj
holdoff 4
persist
maxfail 25
updetach
usepeerdns
plugin pppoatm.so
# Following entry is country/ISP dependent
8.48
The last entry depends on your country/ISP and is created from the VPI and VCI setting in the format
VPI.VCI
. This page has a
VPI / VCI Setting List
.
You also need to configure /etc/ppp/pap-secrets or chap-secrets, depending on your ISP.  pap-secrets files are of the format:
# Secrets for authentication using PAP
# client        server  secret		IP addresses
"ISP-Username"	*	ISP-password	*
See
The PAP/CHAP secrets file
for more details.
If you want to use the DNS servers provided by your ISP (you probably do!) then make a symlink /etc/resolv.conf pointing to /etc/ppp/resolv.conf:
cd etc
rm resolv.conf
ln -s ppp/resolv.conf resolv.conf
Configure udev
Make a file
/etc/udev/rules.d/99-speedtouch.rules
and put something like the following in it:
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="atm", KERNEL=="speedtch*", RUN="/usr/bin/pppd call speedtch"
With this Udev will start pppd automatically, if you do not want this you can simply bring up your modem using
pppd call speedtch
Firmware
Now you have everything except the firmware loading. The easiest way is to let udev do it.  Download
rev4fw.zip
(note disclaimer
here
) and  unzip it. It contains two files, a small one and a big one. Copy the small file to
/usr/lib/firmware/speedtch-1.bin
and the big one to
/usr/lib/firmware/speedtch-2.bin
# mkdir -p /usr/lib/firmware
# cp small_file /usr/lib/firmware/speedtch-1.bin
# cp large_file /usr/lib/firmware/speedtch-2.bin
If you cannot download this file then follow the instructions of the second link above and use the firmware extractor (or download another firmware which has the two files).
Troubleshooting
If the modem is being detected correctly and the firmware is loading, you should see something like the following from
dmesg
:
usbcore: registered new driver speedtch
usb 1-1: found stage 1 firmware speedtch-1.bin
CSLIP: code copyright 1989 Regents of the University of California
PPP generic driver version 2.4.2
usb 1-1: found stage 2 firmware speedtch-2.bin
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
ADSL line is synchronising
DSL line goes up
ADSL line is up (800 Kib/s down || 256 Kib/s up)
The pppd output in the
journal
should look something like:
Plugin pppoatm.so loaded.
PPPoATM plugin_init
PPPoATM setdevname - remove unwanted options
PPPoATM setdevname_pppoatm - SUCCESS:8.48
Using interface ppp0
Connect: ppp0 <--> 8.48
PAP authentication succeeded
local  IP address 123.45.67.89
remote IP address 195.190.249.10
primary   DNS address 195.121.1.34
secondary DNS address 195.121.1.66
If you are having problems you can check pppd debug messages by adding
debug
to
/etc/ppp/peers/speedtch
.  This can help identify authentication problems (e.g. pap vs chap auth), etc.  Otherwise make sure you check your VPI/VCI settings!
See also
http://www.linux-usb.org/SpeedTouch
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/41D02EBD.80600@benton987.fsnet.co.uk/
Arch Linux Forums: speedtouch modem driver not loading after reboot