How to use Arachne with PPP or SLIP

Arachne uses DOS packet driver interface to enable TCP/IP connectivity. (Note: This technology is not very simple to understand, but it's the only standard DOS offers just know. xChaos software is in touch with Caldera, company developing OpenDOS operating system, which will come with new definition of TCP/IP interface for DOS.) The packet driver is resident program (TSR), simillar to utilities like mouse driver or VESA driver. TCP/IP applications access packet driver using software interrupt - usually it is 0x60 (60H). The packet driver for ethernet card (LAN) is small freeware program (named like ODIPKT.COM, or so). If you are using dial-up connection, you need program to "emulate" ehternet card controled by packet driver.

There are following ways to dial Internet from DOS known to me:

EtherPPP

EtherPPP is a single program - PPP.EXE. Arachne offers loading EtherPPP if ARACHNE.CFG file contains line Connection @PPP.EXE parameters>PPP.LOG.

EtherPPP uses CONFIG.PPP and DIAL.PPP files. Arachne creates these files for EtherPPP automaticaly, however, if you don't want to use Arachne built-in configurator, you can study EtherPPP documentation. But remember, the redirection to PPP.LOG file is the only way to pass IP address to Arachne when you use IP_Address PPP option. And you must use either fixed IP address or this option, because EtherPPP is not able to emulate BOOTP.

If you are user with only average knowledge of TCP/IP and DOS, I suggest using graphical PPP setup. Just fill iin the correct values, click Ok, save and than restart Arachne.

You cannot use graphical setup in following two cases:

  1. Non-standart IRQ of your modem. You have to udpate the Connection keyword in ARACHNE.CFG manualy. For example if your internal 28800 bps modem is on COM3 and uses IRQ 7, you have to use Connection @PPP.EXE /c 3 /i 7 /s 38400 /d script>PPP.LOG.
  2. Insufficient low DOS memory. If you cannot optimize your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS (try QEMM packege or Dos 6.2, EMM386 and MEMMAKER utility - not included in Win95), and you don't have cca 425 kB for Arachne + 125 kB for EtherPPP, you will have to use different dialer (like Klos PPP).
If your Internet provider requires you to log on the system, you can update file LOGIN.CFG manually. This file can seem tricky to people who are not friendly with C language, because it uses C-specific macros: %s are symbols replaced by certain ARACHNE.CFG values, and \n and \r are symbols for LF and CR codes. (\r equals to pressing Enter, \r\n equals to end of line in DOS text files.).

Generally, the LOGIN.CFG is sequence of SEND (send string) and RECV (wait for string) commands. RECV includes time in miliseconds (1000 = 1 second) to wait for the specified string. The five %s macros are replaced by following strings: modem "init string" (InitString variable in ARACHNE. CFG), modem "dial command" (DialString variable), Phone number (PhoneNumber variable), user name (PPPusername variable) and password (PPPpassword variable).

Here is theoretical LOGIN.CFG which I think should work almost everywhere. It's included in distribution package.

send "ath\r"
recv 1000 "OK\r\n"
send "%s\r"
recv 3000 "OK\r\n"
send "%s,%s\r"
recv 60000 ":"
send "%s\r"
recv 10000 ":"
send "%s\rppp\rPPP\r"
Note, that it tries both lowercase and uppercase PPP commands. It also ignores the difference between prompt "Login:", "login:", "Username:" and also between "Password:", "password:" and "xxx's password:". For Internet provider Cesnet, I recieved following LOGIN.CFG from one beta-tester:

send "%s\r"
recv 1000 "OK\r\n"
send "%s,%s\r"
recv 60000 "name:"
send "%s\r"
recv 60000 "word:"
send "%s\r"
recv 10000 ">"
send "PPP\r"

Klos PPP

Many people complained, that EtherPPP consumes too much low DOS memory. On some machines this can be problem. There is other dialer called Klos PPP, which can be loaded to high memory (in case that you modify ARACHNE.BAT; you must know how to work with high memory area). The Klos PPP dialer comes with utility that updates WATTCP.CFG and since pre-release 1.0 beta 8, Arachne automaticaly loads KlosPPP if it is installed and calls the utility to modify WATTCP.CFG after connecting, so your ARACHNE.CFG can look simply like:

Connection @PPPMENU.EXE
Hangup @PPPMENU.EXE
DialPage file:DIALINIT.HTM IP_Address WATTCP
TCP_Config WATTCP.CFG

You must get uncrippled self-extracting archive pppshare.exe available at http://www.klos.com. The license agreement doesn't allow us to include the archive directly to Arachne package. Place the pppshare.exe to Arachne directory and go to the Klos PPP setup page to install and configure it.

Klos PPP offers program PPPMENU.EXE as interface to PPP dialer. After connecting with PPPMENU.EXE, you must select "Exit PPP connect" menu option to return to Arachne.

UMSLIP, SLIPPER.EXE, CSLIPPER.EXE:

I have recieved e-mail, that UMSLIP and CSLIPPER both correctly emulate even BOOTP, so you can call one of them as external dialer or you can dial with them first and then use Arachne exactly the same way as on Local Network. Freeware SLIP programs can be found on many anonymous FTP sites.
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