[chat] dlink dsl-300 config with linux

[Alexander Else <aelse@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi chat,

Posting this to chat as it's not directly linux related.  I am experiencing 
a few challenges with getting D-Link's DSL-300 working with 
linux.  Hopefully someone can provide some suggestions to make this easier.

I've got ADSL through iinet (bridged DSL connection), who supply D-Link's 
DSL-300 ADSL modem to new users.  This is pretty low end, aimed to 
direct-connect to ethernet port of one computer with no NAT of its own but 
an inbuilt PPPoE client.  It is meant to be configured through its web 
server (http://192.168.0.1/) and when you go through the config to enter 
account details it also saves the MAC address of the configuring host.  To 
get on the net, enable DHCP on the client and it (hopefully) picks up a 
real-world IP address courtesy of the dsl-300, with any other clients on 
the LAN using DHCP getting an address within 192.168.0.0/24.  Unhelpfully, 
there is no way to manually set a MAC address through the web server 
configuration and the console port to the device requires a connector that 
i do not possess.

This works fine from windows when configuring with IE (have not tested 
another browser), but under linux I have thus far been unable to 
successfully complete the configuration.  The web pages require javascript, 
and so lynx doesn't like it.  While the pages display correctly with 
Netscape (don't have version at hand, 4.62?  installed from debian potato 
packages, IIRC), there appears to be some problem saving the account 
information on the DSL-300.  When submitting it returns to the config 
screen rather quickly, rather than the 10 second or so delay under windows 
whilst the configuration is written to flash.

So.  The only option I can think of at this point is to move the NIC to the 
windows machine, configure the modem (thus saving the "correct" MAC 
address) and return the NIC to the linux box.  This ought to do it.  Before 
tearing hardware out of two perfectly servicable machines I am wondering if 
anyone can magic me up a better (less effort-driven) solution.

Regards,
Alexander.

ps.  Thus far (~5 days) ADSL through iinet seems pretty good.  Latency and 
download speeds in peak time are acceptable and they connect through uunet, 
which i know to have good redundancy.  The pricing plans are quite good and 
worth checking out if you're in the market.