Connecting to AT&T Home Base

English Network/Internet
1

As a result of dial-up just not working out any more, I am trying a AT&T Home Base unit. I have tried it out wirelessly on a Windows Laptop, and was disappointed with the speed. I was wishing to try it out on my OpenSUSE desktop which only has a network card and no wireless card. The instructions with the device just say plug a network cable in. When I try to pull up a web site, it just says server not found. But I can enter the ip number of the device and look at all the settings. It has a Network Name (SSID) which I’m not sure is only for wireless or if I have to enter as my Domain Name in network settings or if that is only for Samba. But I did enter it anyway as the Domain Name on the Hostname/DNS tab. I really don’t understand all this.

I could not enter a ip number of other sites. But when I went into the Routing tab and entered the device ip as the default gateway, it did pull up a directly entered ip. I turned off the firewall, but that seemed not to be the problem. Is it the name servers and do I really have to manually enter them?

:~> /sbin/ifconfig -a
enp2s0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:26:18:D7:5A:F8  
          inet addr:192.168.0.100  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:718028 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:715959 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:62995045 (60.0 Mb)  TX bytes:61459941 (58.6 Mb)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:86023 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:86023 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:7629952 (7.2 Mb)  TX bytes:7629952 (7.2 Mb)

:~> netstat -rn
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
0.0.0.0         192.168.0.1     0.0.0.0         UG        0 0          0 enp2s0
127.0.0.0       0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0       U         0 0          0 lo
192.168.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U         0 0          0 enp2s0

:~> ping -c1 130.57.66.6
PING 130.57.66.6 (130.57.66.6) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 130.57.66.6: icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=314 ms

:~> host forums.opensuse.org
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
2

I had not heard of AT&T Home Base.

It does look as if you have a router and an Internet connection, but lack a DNS server. Normally the router acts as DNS server for the home network. I’m not sure why that isn’t working.

What’s the output from:

cat /etc/resolv.conf
3

It provides phone and Internet. Like a hot spot, but includes home phone service. It has wi-fi settings, firewall, router, dhcp, and apn settings among others. Under apn settings, of which I don’t really know what is but said configured for at&t network, it has dns mode set to auto as opposed to manual.

:~> cat /etc/resolv.conf
### /etc/resolv.conf file autogenerated by netconfig!
#
# Before you change this file manually, consider to define the
# static DNS configuration using the following variables in the
# /etc/sysconfig/network/config file:
#     NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SEARCHLIST
#     NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SERVERS
#     NETCONFIG_DNS_FORWARDER
# or disable DNS configuration updates via netconfig by setting:
#     NETCONFIG_DNS_POLICY=''
#
# See also the netconfig(8) manual page and other documentation.
#
# Note: Manual change of this file disables netconfig too, but
# may get lost when this file contains comments or empty lines
# only, the netconfig settings are same with settings in this
# file and in case of a "netconfig update -f" call.
#
### Please remove (at least) this line when you modify the file!

Didn’t expect it to have anything. When I use the modem, the name servers are appended. But when I plug a cable in, unless some automatic service would run, how would it be modified?

4

The last three lines for me are:


### Please remove (at least) this line when you modify the file!
search attlocal.net
nameserver 192.168.1.254

The last two of those lines are the important difference – but don’t copy them.

Those last two lines are put there by DHCP. My system makes a DHCP query to the router to get a local IP address. And the router also provides DNS information.

I’m not sure why that isn’t working for you. You can maybe add “nameserver 8.8.8.8” to that file, but note the remarks about editing the file. That’s a google public DNS server.

And a note that my own service is with AT&T U-verse, which is not the same as you appear to have.

5

So that’s all done automatically somehow?

I added a name server in the Hostname/DNS tab in Network Settings and it works now. My /etc/resolv.conf now includes that at the end. Could you tell me if that is in your Hostname tab and if the Routing tab has an entry for your Default Gateway?

6

On 2015-05-14 14:56, dt30 wrote:
>
> So that’s all done automatically somehow?

Yes.

In network settings, instead of writing an IP address, mask, gateway,
dns, etc, you say “automatic”, also known as DHCP.

If you do it manually you have to enter the four things yourself. And do
it right.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))

7

No, there’s no entry for DNS server or default gateway. My router supplies that via DHCP.

However, if I had configured an explicit IP address instead of using DHCP, then I would have needed to configure those. At one time, I used to do that on my main computer, but use DHCP on other home computers. But I eventually went to the more uniform practice of DHCP everywhere.

8

For some reason I thought I needed a fixed ip address. In fact, just recently I had read somewhere about needing one. Something about running servers or something. I run apache and samba. Don’t know if either of those need it. But I changed to DHCP, removing the other entries I added, rebooted, and it worked. Looking at the resolv.conf, it inserted: nameserver 192.168.0.1. Imagine that! I don’t understand it all or how routers work, but I get the feeling I’m going to learn a little more about them.

I’m thinking when I unplug the network cable and plug it into the other computer and try to run samba, it may not work with samba. I know how to put it back, but will give it a try without. I don’t need to connect to the other computer very often, so no problem. I just don’t know how it would get an assigned network ip if nothing is out there to give it. I guess routers change things.

Thanks for bringing my attention to the DHCP. I had never understood how it could be used in the past, but maybe because I never had anything to give an ip address to me?

9

dt30 donned his tin foil hat and penned:

> I’m thinking when I unplug the network cable and plug it into the other
> computer and try to run samba, it may not work with samba. I know how
> to put it back, but will give it a try without. I don’t need to connect
> to the other computer very often, so no problem. I just don’t know how
> it would get an assigned network ip if nothing is out there to give it.
> I guess routers change things.
>
> Thanks for bringing my attention to the DHCP. I had never understood
> how it could be used in the past, but maybe because I never had anything
> to give an ip address to me?
>
>

Hi dt,

The IP you get will be from the router itself, now I do not know anything
about at&t hardware but if you are able to get to the modem control panel
then look for something that will assign a static ip to your machine, note
this is only for your internal LAN not your external connection;

Then you should be able to find settings to send certain protocols (port
80=HTTP, etc) to that internal address.

Then things start to get interesting :slight_smile:

P.S.

It is a bit steep to get to grips with but when you get it then like me will
own the world ha ha ha!! :slight_smile:

HTH

Mark
Nullus in verba
Caveat emptor
Nil illigitimi carborundum

10

On 2015-05-18 19:46, dt30 wrote:
>
> For some reason I thought I needed a fixed ip address. In fact, just
> recently I had read somewhere about needing one. Something about
> running servers or something. I run apache and samba. Don’t know if
> either of those need it.

Yes, you do.

If you have a server, any kind, the clients need to know its address, or
they will not be able to reach it. So you need to, somehow, control the
IP the server has.

There are two means: one, giving it a fixed IP. Two, using DHCP, you
configure the DHCP server (typically in the router) to always give the
same address to your server.

In any case, you need to know the address.

There is another way, with DHCP (means automatic network setup). You
need a local DNS server that is combined with the DHCP server, in a way
that when a machine gets an address, the name server is told about that
new address. Unfortunately, home routers do not have this feature.

Thus, choose your method.

> But I changed to DHCP, removing the other
> entries I added, rebooted, and it worked. Looking at the resolv.conf,
> it inserted: nameserver 192.168.0.1. Imagine that! I don’t understand
> it all or how routers work, but I get the feeling I’m going to learn a
> little more about them.

That’s because most home routers contain a small dns server, to
centralize and cache the requests made by your home machines to your ISP
DNS server.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))

11

My forays into the high speed world came to a crashing halt. Hopefully only temporarily. My AT&T account started giving errors in that all non-ATT.com pages redirected to a page which said I had no data available. But support said I had plenty, but after many attempts they were not able solve the issue. They traded out sim cards, the whole router device, and nothing worked and I finally got refunded. I had told them at the beginning that it was the account and not the device. But they were not able to give me a new account since they were unable to transfer data available over. Guess they have too many internal restriction policies. I couldn’t even use the phone. So all in all, it wasn’t a rewarding experience.