[ale] TCP/IP weirdness.

[Joe]

Hello, all.

I hope someone can enclue me about this...

A few weeks ago, my popclient started acting funny. When I dialed
MindSpring, everything would happen OK, and I'd get a 14K connection
(the max on my antiquated modem :-/ ). However, when I tried to
retrieve my email with popclient, it would hang while retrieving the
first message in my mailbox. This happened every time, so I called MS
tech support, thinking that my mailbox was corrupt or something. 

No, they can login as me and fetch my mail without any trouble. So I
scratch my head, and try dialing the Atlanta POP (I normally use the
LaGrange/West Point one), and... it worked!

But only about every third try or so.

Then I started to notice other strange behavior associated with
network stuff... Like, I'd ftp to tsx-11, and I'd get the password
prompt and so forth, but the session would hang after receiving about
three lines of the intro message. This happens most of the time when I
dial the LaGrange POP, and about half the time when I dial the Atlanta
POP.

But the worst thing, the really heartbreaking thing, happened today...

I booted my machine into Windog 95. I started my Mindspring connection
to the LaGrange POP. I started Netscape in order to fetch my mail.

And it worked right, the very first time!

I sent myself a bunch of test messages and tried to retrieve
them... no problem. No matter what I do, I cannot get this symptom to
occur under Win95 - and I absolutely cannot fetch my mail reliably
under Linux.

Two things have changed recently that may have something to do with
this problem:

(1) I upgraded my kernel from 1.2.13 to 2.0.27. I did this back before
Christmas, though, and I'm pretty sure things were working OK more
recently than that. In case it matters, I'm using an OLD Slackware
distribution, upgraded piecemeal. I also upgraded pppd when I upgraded
the kernel - I don't remember the version, it's whatever one is
recommended in the 2.0.27 release notes. I'm also using a good libc
(5.3.12).

(2) MindSpring started using dynamically-assigned PPP addresses. I'm
reasonably sure that I implemented the necessary configuration changes
correctly, since I -do- get a connection and I can ping fairly
reliably. (Although that reminds me - if I ping with a packet size
greater than 512 bytes, the ping hangs...) However, Windog95 still
connects using the old, permanent-address style connection (which
shouldn't work but does - I forgot to reconfigure the Win95 dialup
connection, since I almost never use it).

I'm SO depressed. Please, can someone give me some idea what could be
happening here? All I can figure is that maybe I've accidentally
violated some MTU limit, but I don't know how to confirm or fix that,
even if it's really the problem.

Thanks,

-- Joe (not the same joe, however)