[pptp-server] Problems with iPAQ clients?

[Geckomail User]

G'day!

> You can be lucky. My iPAQ won't even connect to our LiNUX pptp
> server. No way....I have tried it over cradle, over GSM..
> Nothing...It halts on point where PC is sending ppp config req
> to iPAQ but then it seems like it doesn't get any reply and it
> fails.

That might be your problem; see below...

> All other clients work OK (Win98, Win2000...). Did you have to
> change anything particular in configuration of PPP or PPTP server
> on LiNUX??

The iPAQ doesn't appear to like 40-bit encryption (or none, for that matter)
so I had to make sure I had the mppe-128 setting in my pppd options file;
other than that it was pretty straight-forward.

Remember that the cradle only has pseudo-IP connectivity - ActiveSync and
the iPAQ talk to each other over a 192.168.115.0/30 network or something
dodgy like that - IIRC it's a 2 bit subnet (2 hosts, one broadcast and one
subnet address) and the Windows host that's running ActiveSync doesn't
forward packets. If you want any IP connectivity for the iPAQ using the
cradle, you're out of luck :( This is the offical word from Compaq,
unfortunately.

Using GSM, you might be encountering the problem of the PPP implementation
not being reentrant (i.e. only one instance of the PPP code can run on the
iPAQ at any one time). With a GSM circuit-switched data connection you
already have one instance of PPP code just to provide you with IP
connectivity to your ISP; using it again for PPTP probably won't work.

I'm using the iPAQ over a wireless (802.11b) LAN. I've tried three different
wireless cards now (Cisco Aironet, Lucent Orinoco Gold and Nokia C020), in
addition to using a standard NE2000-compatible Ethernet (wireline) card
connected to the same Ethernet segment as the wireless base station.

Regards,
Andrew