Two PPP connections to the same ISP with same remote gateway

Tom Jobbins tomjobbins at gmail.com
Thu Jan 12 13:37:43 PST 2006


 Hi,

I have a FreeBSD 6.0-STABLE server running as my internet gateway.  It was
newly installed to 6.0-RELEASE yesterday, and built to -STABLE from a cvsup
early this morning.

I have two separate accounts at the same broadband ISP, with two separate
PPPoE modems on two separate phone lines.  I need to connect both of these
simultaneously thus providing me with two PPP connections to the same ISP.

The problem I am having is that both connections have the same remote
gateway, and FreeBSD is preventing me from setting the IP address on the
second connection because its gateway is the same.

This can be demonstrated from the command line with the following:
[root at magrathea:~]$ ifconfig tun0 1.2.3.5 1.2.3.250
[root at magrathea:~]$ ifconfig tun1 1.2.4.4 1.2.3.250
ifconfig: ioctl (SIOCAIFADDR): File exists

Similarly when I connect using either ppp or mpd, I get the above error in
the logs and the second connection fails.  Either connection works on its
own, but they won't work simultaneously.

What is strange is that I was speaking to an op on the Efnet IRC channel
#FreeBSDHelp who said he was able to execute the above two commands on his
6.0 machine without problems.  So I am confused as to why it won't work for
me.  Perhaps there is some kernel or other configuration option he has set
but I don't, which would make this work?

If anyone could tell me a way to get this working I would be most grateful.
Once the connections are established I will be using ipfilter to do
source-IP routing, i.e. LAN machine 192.168.0.100 will be routed via tun0,
192.168.0.200 will be routed via tun1, etc.


Thanks in advance


Tom

PS.  Mulilink connections or any other method of combining the two PPP
connections will not work for me - I need them to be separate and distinct,
with their own IP addresses.  If I had realised there would be this problem
then I would have chosen a different broadband ISP for the second connection
- but now I'm stuck into a minimum contract so I need to get it working.


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