Devranjan Das wrote:

Hi I use PPPOE (default implementation that came with Ubuntu 7.04) to connect to my ISP. Everything was fine for last two years. But from last three days, I am not able use Internet. I tried using Windows where everything works fine with the same settings. On "ifconfig -a", it shows the ppp adapter. But when I enter the URL in the browser it says "looking for google.co.in". I am not able to ping the DNS server. I think that its not getting DNS response. When I run the pppoe configuration utility, it fetches the DNS server address from the ISP. My friend who uses the same ISP has also reported the same problem with Ubuntu 7.04.

Just check if newer packages for pppoeconf are available in apt for your distro. Try out a live K/Ubuntu 7.10 CD and check out pppoeconf. A client of mine had Kubuntu 6.06 on his machine but did not use it much due to the large 640x480 display. At that time net was working with pppoeconf. However after a long period when trying to resolve the display issue, the net worked for some time and after that it would just not resolve urls. The ppp0 connection would get established successfully. On checking the /etc/resolv.conf file I found that it was putting in some odd nameserver entries like 'search myhome' and next line nameserver 192.168.X.X'. That is why dns would not work. Even after deleting the records, after a reboot they appeared again. His cable guy had no dhcp running on his net. Finally after 4 hours of struggle, I booted into a live Kubuntu 7.10 session and there pppoe gave the correct dns entries in resolv.conf without the junk entries. Display resolution too was good and 7.10 was then loaded but that is another story.

Whenever cable guys make some changes in the backend, pppoe tends to go for a toss.