[ltp] Problem connecting to ISP with TP600

[Tod Harter]

> lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
>           inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
>           UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
>           RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>           TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>           collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
>           RX bytes:560 (560.0 b)  TX bytes:560 (560.0 b)
>
Bernard, this is perfectly fine and normal. When you said "packet size" I 
assumed you meant the "MTU" setting (which is actually literally the maximum 
size of packet you will send and can't ever be less that I believe something 
like 56 bytes or so). "RX packets 8" in your status just means you have sent 
8 packets since you brought up the interface. There's nothing wrong with 
that, though its worth noting that RX packets and TX packets on the loopback 
interface should ALWAYS be the same number, and the same with RX and TX 
bytes. Thats the whole idea of the loopback device, it just echos back to 
your machine whatever gets sent out on it.

Basically loopback is just there so that TCP/IP will function on a machine 
with no other network interfaces. IP is so deeply embedded in Linux that 
major parts of the system can't function if they can't access an IP interface 
(Like X Windows), so for simplicity every Unix machine has a loopback 
interface, even if its not doing any networking. Otherwise every program you 
might run on a standalone machine would need to have extra code to deal with 
not having TCP/IP. 

Anyway I think in your case this is a side-issue. Your problem seems to be 
centered on the ppp interfaces... 

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