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The Conexant AccessRunner

Background

I've said a fair bit about the Conexant AccessRunner in the IPv6 information page. I thought I'd provide a bit more information about it here in case you're interested in a similar setup.

Basically, the AccessRunner is a card encapsulating the Conexant 3805 chipset. This can interface by either PCI or USB, but I only have experience with the PCI interface myself. The card is a single multi-function device, listed as follows by "lspci -v":

00:09.0 System peripheral: Conexant ADSL AccessRunner PCI Arbitration Device (rev 01)
Subsystem: Conexant ADSL AccessRunner PCI Arbitration Device
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
BIST result: 00         
Memory at d5013000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64]
Memory at d5000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
						                                
00:09.1 ATM network controller: Conexant AccessRunner PCI ADSL Interface Device (rev 01)
Subsystem: Conexant AccessRunner PCI ADSL Interface Device
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
Memory at d5010000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128]
Memory at d5011000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

As you can see, the card is an ADSL modem and ATM card in one package. This is perfect for the UK market, as PPPoA is used as long as BT provides your local loop, and as much as I hate it, they provide by far most of the local loops in this country.

The AccessRunner driver is quite a clever piece of kit, and so it should be — the kernel module is over half a megabyte in size! Anyway, this provides access to the card from the Linux ATM layer, and combined with a PPPD and kernel supporting PPPoA, connections to any ADSL ISP can be made very quickly. Apart from slight latency improvements, the major advantage over using an external router is that you will have complete control over all packets coming into your network layer.

Statistics

The drive itself provides quite a lot of useful and/or interesting information about the current connection. Here's an example of some of the information it can give you:

Conexant AccessRunner PCI ADSL Modem Adapter Status
----------------------------------

ADSL Line Connected

Line Rates:   Receive 576 kbps     Transmit 288 kbps

ADSL Modulation:G.DMT, Rate Unlimited  /  Full Rate

ATM Virtual Channel IDs: VPI: 0   VCI: 38

Physical Layer Stats:      Receive                   Transmit
 Noise Margin       33.16/ -5.08:  96           127.99/127.99:   0
 Attenuation              21.02                     24.50
 Power                                                -38

ATM Link Stats:      Receive           Transmit
 Bytes             215144437          168997761
 Cells               4059329            3188637
 Management Cells          0                  3
 CLP=0 Cells         4059329                  1
 CLP=1 Cells               0            3188636
 HEC Errors                0 
 Alignment Errors          0 
 Unroutable Cells          6 

AAL Link Stats:          Receive           Transmit
 Good Bytes            194534688          152791104
 Good Frames              442589             458746
 Discarded Bytes          237072 
 Discarded Frames            321 
 CRC Errors                  273 
 Invalid Length Errors        48 
 Timeout Errors                0 

ATM Channel Stats:       Receive           Transmit
 Bytes                 215144437          168997602
 Cells                   4059329            3188634
 Mgmt Cells                    0                  1
 CLP=0 Cells             4059329                  0
 CLP=1 Cells                   0            3188634
 HEC Errors                    0 
 Alignment Errors              0 
 Unroutable Cells              0 

AAL 5  Channel Stats:    Receive           Transmit
 Good Bytes            194534688          152791104
 Good Frames              442589             458746
 Discarded Bytes          237072
 Discarded Frames            321
 CRC Errors                  273 
 Invalid Length Errors        48 
 Timeout Errors                0 

Driver version - 6.1.2.007 (09102001)
EE PROM Mac Address 00.d0.41.03.77.b2

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