Q & A
Last Updated: 06/20/00

Q 1. How do I upgrade my IROUTE128 with the new software release code?

Q 2. How do I connect my LAN to the internet using IROUTE128?

Q 3. How do I do LAN-to-LAN connection?

Q 4. How do I configure a new physical Ethernet address?

Q 5. How do I configure bandwidth on demand?

Q 6. What is firewall?

Q 7. How do I configure a firewall?

Q 8. What is NAT?

Q 9. How do I configure NAT?

Q10. What should I prepare before connecting a LAN with the Internet?

Q11. How to upgrade the firmware?

A1 . You can upgrade your router with the new software with any available terminal program (we recommend you to use ProComm Plus but Win9x's Hyper Terminal should also do). Here are the steps:

1. Power reset the IROUTE128 to put it in AT command mode.

2. make sure that you have a connection with the router by typing "AT" in the AT command mode and see if you get an "OK" response from the router.

3. Set your terminal baud rate to 115200bps, data format to 8-N-1, hardware flow control and transfer protocol to ASCII.

1. Start downloading the new software image by issuing a at%sd1 command at AT command interface, the IROUTE128 will ask you to confirm that you really want to upgrade the code with the message "Download New Code To Flash(Y/N)?". At this time you should enter "Y" for software downloading.

2. When you see the following response message from the IROUTE128, then you can start using the terminal program to send the new software to the IROUTE128. The response message should read "Set Terminal To Hardware Flow Control, 115200, 8N1" "Use ASCII File Transfer Only".

3. Wait for the download to finish, the IROUTE should reset itself to run the new code automatically. AT this time the IROUTE is back in the AT command mode interface. You can invoke the router command line interface (CLI) by enter "AT:" and carriage return.

A 2. Before you can connect your LAN to the Internet you must obtain an ISDN internet account from your local Internet Service Provider (ISP). Your local ISP should provide you the following information when you register with them:

1. Account user ID password

2. Dial in telephone number, you may need to have two phone numbers if you want to run Multilink Point-to-Point Protocol (i.e. MLPPP).

When you already obtain the above information from the ISP, then you can configure the IROUTE128 with the proper information so that it can connect your LAN to the internet. Configuring the IROUTE128 is very easy with the quick config "qconfig" command:

From the router command line interface (CLI) enter the following command:

>qconfig

The IROUTE128 will prompt you to enter the Ethernet IP address for the IROUT128, the ISP user ID and password, and the ISP phone number. When you are done with all the information requested by quick config, then IROUTE128 returns you to the CLI prompt. At this time we recommend you to save all your configuration information by enter the command: >config save Now you are ready to make the connection to the internet. You do this by using the connect command:

>connect<user id>

The IROUTE128 shall attempt to connect you to your local ISP. IF it is successful then you should see a message indicating that connection with the internet is successfully done. At this time, depend on weather your LAN has private IP addresses or not then you may want to configure NAT (Network Address Translation) to translate all of your private IP address to the public IP address. This is done with the following command:

>config ip nat add isdn

That's it and now you can start surfing.

A 3. You need to have the following information before you can do LAN-to-LAN connection:

1. Remote router ISDN telephone numbers

2. Remote router logon user ID and password

3. Remote router ISDN IP pool and ISDN IP address must be configured before dialing in can take place. You can usually decide on an arbitrary IP address and IP pool for the purpose of doing LAN-to-LAN connection. For example, using 192.168.1.1 for IP address and 192.168.1.2 for IP pool would be an acceptable choice.

With the above information can begin to configure your remote and local router for LAN-to-LAN connection.

Configure remote Router for LAN-to-LAN connection:

If the remote router is also an IROUTE128 then follow the following steps:

1. Setting up a user account for dialing in

>config int isdn ppp add user<user id>pass<password>

2. Configure IP address

>config int isdn ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0

3. Configure IP pool

>config int isdn ip pool 192.168.1.2

That's it, you are done with configuring the remote router. In the case that the remote router is not an IROUTE128 then you should consult the router's documentation in order to do similar configuration for LAN-to-LAN connection.

Configure Local Router for LAN-to-LAN connection:

Assuming that the local router is an IROUTE128, the following steps are used to configure the router:

1. Setting up dialing out user account, including telephone numbers for dialing out

> config int isdn ppp add <user id> pass <password> max 2

phone <dial out phone #1> <dial out phone #2>

2. Issue the connection command

> connect <user id>

Your local router should make the connection to the remote router, after that you should be able to establish any TCP/IP connection from one LAN to another.

A 4. First, you don't have to configure the physical Ethernet address because this has already been done at the IROUTE128 manufacturing time. In any case if you still insist on changing the Ethernet physical address, then this is the command:

>config int ether phy addr xx.xx.xx.xx.xx.xx

where xx.xx.xx.xx.xx.xx is the new Ethernet physical address in hexadecimal.

A 5. Bandwidth on Demand (BOD) is a feature that allows the second telephone line connection to the internet to be made only if there is enough traffic between the IROUTE128 and the internet -- which exceeds the capacity of the first telephone line connection. Since it is likely that there are many periods of little activity where there may be no data to be sent between the IROUTE and the internet, this feature helps the user to save a lot on the connection cost of the ISDN phone line.

By default BOD is enable on the IROUTE.

The command to enable and disable the BOD is as follow:

To enable BOD enter the following command at the CLI prompt:

>config int isdn ppp bod incre 80 decre 20

This tell the IROUTE that it should bring up the second telephone line connection when the traffic level on the first telephone line exceed 80% of its capacity then the second telephone line connection should be terminated.

To disable BOD, i.e., if you do not want the second telephone line

connection to be brought down even if there is no traffic on the line, enter the following command:

>config int isdn ppp bod decre 0

A 6. Firewall is an internet traffic filtering process which is used to keep certain type of traffic from entering or leaving a specific site. This control mechanism is used mainly for security purpose where an organization can selectively reject traffic on the internet. There are currently two distinct types of firewalls in common use on the Internet today. The first type is more properly called a packet filtering router, where the kernel on a multi-homed machine chooses whether to forward or block packets based on a set of rules. The second type, known as proxy servers, rely on daemons to provide authentication and to forward packets, possibly on a multi-homed machine which has kernel packet forwarding disabled.

The IROUTE uses the first type which is the packet filtering process to implement the firewall. A fairly sophisticated level of packet filtering process has been implemented on the IROUTE; therefore, it is expected that a novice user may take sometime to get familiar with all of the firewall commands and features.

The IROUTE firewall can filter the following type of traffics:

1. IP, ICMP, TCP, UDP

2. It can reject the above traffic from a certain machine given its IP address.

3. It can reject the above traffic on a certain port. This is useful because one can configure firewall to selectively reject Telnet, FTP, IRC, News, web surfing, etc.

A 7. This question is too general for a firewall question! Suppose you want to configure firewall to disallow someone on the internet to telnet into the company computers on the LAN. Since we know that telnet always use TCP port #23, we will configure the IROUTE to deny any TCP traffic on this port. The commands are as follows: First, we need to turn on the firewall.

>config firewall on

Enter the rule for denying TCP traffic on port #23

>config firewall add deny tcp from any to any:23 via isdn

A 8. The IROUTE has the capability to perform IP routing with the addition of changing the IP address in the packets on the fly, i.e. as the data is passed through from the LAN to the Internet. In IROUTE this feature is called Network address Translation(NAT). It allows multiple machines connected to a LAN access the Internet through only 1 IP address. For this reason routers with NAT are also called IP Share devices.

A 9. Configuring NAT on the IROUTE is easy. When the connection has been established with the Internet, enter the following command:

>config ip nat add isdn

A10. To set up a basic LAN to Internet connection, you need

Cables:

1. RS232 Cable

2. RJ11 Cable

3. RJ45 Cable

ISP:

1. ISDN account

2. Username & Password

3. Dial in Telephone Number

4. DNS settings

TELCO:

1. ISDN line installed

2. Main ISDN telephone number(DN1)

3. Second telephone number(DN2)

4. Spid number ( spid used in North America only)

Your Network:

1. IP address (Ethernet interface/LAN Port)

2. Subnet Mask

A11. You may download the newest firmware ( *. zip ; use PKUNZIP to extract it ) from software download, and use HyperTerminal program ( path " \program file\accessories\Hyperterminal" ) to upgrade it. First, config your COM port parameter and make sure the RS232 cable is in the correct position. Type the firmware upgrade command "AT%SDL1" and follow the indicative steps on the screen.