The Alien has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Greetings, fellow monks. I seek to implement a program to dial and test many numbers. Alas, I have been instructed to implement it in a Win32 environment, which is not my strong area. I will need to dial, connect and perform various tests. The testing I know well, but the mechanics of dialing in this enviroment are arcane to me.

If I cannot do this in Perl, I will need to do it in Visual C++ (so sayeth the powers that be) which I really don't want to do. So I ask of you, can you direct me to modules that might be of assistance for this, or perhaps known scripts that perform similar functions that I could study? All I need to learn, really, is how to dial and make a PPP connection in this environment.

Thank you.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: PPP in Win32
by lhoward (Vicar) on Jul 17, 2000 at 22:29 UTC
    For communicating with the modem and passing raw data over the connection under Win32/Perl you should use Win32::SerialPort. However, this won't help you with PPP (well, if this were another OS you could use the SerialPort module to dial the modem and then start up the PPP process to negotiate and test the ppp connection). The only PPP driver I know of for Win32 is the one that is part of Dialup Networking In the Win 3.x days there used to be lots of 3rd party dialers/IP stacks (trumpet winsock, etc...) however I don't know if any of those are still around. So you may have to figure out how to get perl to work with Dialup Networking.
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Re: PPP in Win32
by Arjen (Sexton) on Jul 17, 2000 at 22:35 UTC
    I don't know if it will work, but there is a ras.h file (if i remember right) which has the C++ interface to the dial up networking making it possible to create an dial DUN files.

    I implemented the RasApi once in Delphi and I'm sure you can find some more info on it on the microsoft site.

    Good hunting.
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(jcwren) Re: PPP in Win32
by jcwren (Prior) on Jul 17, 2000 at 22:39 UTC
    Sad as it is to say, and as heritical as it may sound, MSVC is probably the better tool for this job. Unless you want to spend a lot of time figuring out Win32API, and writing XSUB modules to talk to the various functions you need, Perl isn't the way to go.

    If you decide you absolutely have to do it in Perl, take a look at the Win32::RASE module. This appears to allow you to manage dial-up entries. But you'd be taking the long path, and still have no direct control over the PPP parameters, without writing some code.

    --Chris

    e-mail jcwren
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      I tend to disagree.

      While the api has to be conferted, or already has been converted as you state with Win32::RASE, it will be no more difficult then in VC to manage DUNs. The Api gives complete function (meaning complete control in setting parameters and to specify whatever you need) and thus the usage of that Api can be done in any language, the langauge of your choice.

      But yes... you would need to read about the Api, as you would with VC.

      Arjen
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