KOS PPP support over the Modem

[BlueCrab]

This evening, I have finally finished working on one of the most requested features that had been missing from KOS for all these years -- the ability to use the modem to connect to the Internet. KOS has had support for using the modem itself for a long time (the current modem driver was added around ten years ago now), but there hasn't ever been a working way of actually using that with the network stack. Until now, of course.

I had first started working on a PPP library about 7 years ago, only to shelve it for various reasons, including the inability to actually test it to see if it worked. Well, about 2 weeks ago, I decided to pick up where I left off, and restart work on a PPP library. Most of the code has been written in that 2 week span, although there are some bits and pieces from my old library from 2007. The library itself contains support code for using PPP over both the modem and over a coder's cable, and is fully linked in with the IPv4 portion of the network stack (no IPv6 support just yet, but I'll probably do that at some point, just for completeness). I've tested using the library to connect to a Raspberry Pi over the coder's cable (USB, obviously), and to connect to a Netopia R2020 router over the modem with success on both counts.

What I'd like is if people who might have a coder's cable of some sort and a Dreamcast modem laying around might be able to test out the library with a real Dialup ISP. That's the one thing I haven't been able to test the code with as of yet that I'd like to have done. If you want to do so, first make sure you have your git copy of KOS up-to-date, re-run make to build libppp (it's in the addons tree) and the other assorted updates to the repo, and then compile the following program ("kos-cc -o ppptest.elf ppptest.c -lppp" will do the trick, assuming of course that you name the file ppptest.c):

Code: Select all

#include <stdio.h>
#include <kos/dbglog.h>

#include <arch/arch.h>

#include <ppp/ppp.h>
#include <kos/net.h>

KOS_INIT_FLAGS(INIT_DEFAULT | INIT_NET);

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    int i;

    ppp_init();

    i = ppp_modem_init("12", 1, NULL);
    if(i < 0)
        return 0;

    ppp_set_login("dream", "cast");
    i = ppp_connect();

    if(i == -1) {
        printf("Link establishment failed!\n");
        return 0;
    }

    printf("Pinging the other side of the link (%d.%d.%d.%d)\n",
           net_default_dev->gateway[0], net_default_dev->gateway[1],
           net_default_dev->gateway[2], net_default_dev->gateway[3]);

    for(i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {
        net_icmp_send_echo(net_default_dev, net_default_dev->gateway, 1234, i,
                           NULL, 0);
        thd_sleep(500);
    }

    printf("Pinging sylverant.net (67.222.144.120)\n");
    for(i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {
        uint8 addr[4] = { 67, 222, 144, 120 };
        net_icmp_send_echo(net_default_dev, addr, 1234, i, NULL, 0);
        thd_sleep(500);
    }

    ppp_shutdown();
    return 0;
}

You'll probably want to change the phone number (the first argument to ppp_modem_init()), and the username/password pair (ppp_set_login()).

[SWAT]

Good job! As always beautiful code, look nice.
In the network stack are still need to add DNS functions such as gethostbyname etc. If you do it will be just fine!

[BlueCrab]

A couple of different DNS-related things are actually next on my list of things to do.

Granted one of the things has nothing to do with KOS... but that's beside the point.

[BlueCrab]

In the network stack are still need to add DNS functions such as gethostbyname etc. If you do it will be just fine!

Done as of commit 1b7264, documentation is here (although it follows POSIX pretty much completely, other than flags that aren't supported).

As with most systems, gethostbyname() should be avoided in favor of getaddrinfo().

[SWAT]

Very good! Big thanks!

[Crystal Triad]

Hello, will be there any examples for this?

Thanks,

- Crystal Triad

[BlueCrab]

Hello, will be there any examples for this?

Thanks,

- Crystal Triad

Of the PPP stuff? Sure at some point (hopefully soon) I'll throw one together that reads the settings from the flashrom and attempts to connect. Of course, there's an example in the first post here that does most of that already.

[TheReverendGregory]

I know it would depend on the developer wanting to implement it, but does this new support in KOS open the door for games like DOOM having modem play support?

[BlueCrab]

In theory, sure. Anything written with KOS that has network support could easily be made to support the modem using this library.