I've noticed over the last couple of weeks that no matter how I choose to
authenticate myself, either with PAP or with a terminal login, the
authentication process can take a long time, I'd estimate it to be on the
order of a minute.
 
I know that by default, the PPP daemon on my Linux box won't wait around
that long for PAP authentication, nor will the script that I've written to
do a manual login -- I've watched both methods fail about half the time in
the last two weeks.  I can re-configure my PPP daemon to wait longer than
30 seconds, but I'm not sure if other folks can configure their Windows
and Mac clients to wait around so long.
 
I have usually been able to solve the problem by bringing up a terminal
emulator, logging in by hand, and then handing the line over to the PPP
process.  However, on occasion (maybe once a week or so), I'll repeatedly
get the message, "% Access denied", and will fail to authenticate at all.
 
 
My system logs every PPP-connect attempt, and the success or failure
thereof.  I might even be able to get some more detailed logging (such as
the exact text of the manual login attempt).  If anyone is interested in
these logs to help in troubleshooting, please feel free to email me.  I'd
love to help.
 
Clayton