165335 - Conn: dialup on demand is incorrect for LANs

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 465158

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[idgreenwald]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

Dialup on demand for computers on LANs needs to distinguish between SERVERS and
CLIENTS.  If it is running on a SERVER it should dialup, whereas it should not
on a  CLIENT.  For example:

I have a home LAN network with a desktop and a laptop.  The laptop is a CLIENT
that connects to the net through the desktop SERVER when it is on the LAN or by
direct dial when it is not..  When I bring up Mozilla on the server I expect it
to connect via my dial up modem.  It does not because Moz detects the LAN
connection and doesn't dial.  OTOH if I bring up Moz on the laptop when it is
connected to the L.AN, it should not direct dial.  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Establish a LAN with SERVER A and CLIENT B
2. Start Mozilla on A and try to access the net (e.g., Get mail)
Actual Results:  
Dialup on demand did not work.  Manual intervention was required to dial my ISP.

Expected Results:  
Automatically connect to my ISP

Comment 1

[benc]

If you use other browsers, does auto-dial work the way you want?

I'm nominating this nsbeta1 because I think it is a pretty reasonable sounding
configuration that I think we overlooked when we implemented the feature.

The pref either needs a 3rd mode (dial no matter what) or we need to think about
other siutations as well.

If anyone knows what Windows 9x does in this situation, please let me know.

Comment 2

[idgreenwald]

NS 4.79 does not dialup on demand.  IE 6.x does (even with the LAN connected). 

Since LAN "administrators" are (or ought to be) fairly sophisticated users, I
think a simple solution might work: turn autodial ON or OFF (ignoring the
existence of LANs).  Then one can turn it ON on servers and OFF on clients. 

It would be nice if this were available as an Advanced EDIT preference.

Comment 3

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

You can disable the feature completely in Mozilla by setting the pref
network.autodial-helper.enabled to false.  There are no plans for a UI.  

Comment 4

[Samir Gehani]

adt: nsbeta1-

Comment 5

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

By desciption this could be duplicate of bug 465158.