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SBC Wants To Switch DSL Format To PPPoE
Mr. Haplo writes: "Looks like SBC's at it again. According to this story, SBC wants to change everyone's DSL connection to PPPoE. The article goes on to say that the California Public Utilities Commission and the ISP Association are filing complaints against SBC and PacBell over this. It doesn't mention anything about SDSL connections, however, so I don't know what they'll do, if anything, about them. They do say that business services would be left alone, though, so I assume this means just about any SDSL services (I hope!). Someone needs to take a baseball bat to SBC's executives."
NotoriousQ... are you hooking your modem directly to a hub, then? Mail me at ryanov@bergen.org.
I'll tell you why they are doing it. It's because that everyone that uses SBC for their DSL has to use PPPoE. Even SBC employees have trouble getting static addresses. By making everyone else use PPPoE, the only factor for competition is price, and SBC has never made money on DSL directly, and probabally never will. SBC is looking to control the residential internet market any way they can. The price hikes happen later.
Yeah, you heard that right. ISP's can assign static addresses via PPPoE. I'll admit that it isn't as easy as with DHCP assigned addresses but it can be done. BellSouth.net is already doing it for business customers and plans on doing for residential. I've also seen posts claiming PPPoE was a hack. Considering DHCP was designed to be used over a LAN using it for DSL in a bridged Ethernet over WAN mode makes PPPoE look like a MIL spec design. The fact is PPPoE scales better for the ISP. It makes it easier for them on several levels actually. I know it's fun and easy to bash ISP's and even more fun to bash telco's but sometimes what's good for them is actually good for us too. It creates some short term problems for people that have adapted to the crap that is DHCP over DSL. I would have preferred DHCP since it's easy to setup. I got a choice between PPPoE and PPPoA. I dumped the crappy Speedtouch USB modem, bought an old Alcatel 1000 off ebay, bought a netgear cable/dsl router because I needed IPSEC tunneling and I've been happy ever since. Adapt!
I'm using PPPoE now with SWBell on a linux box. The same machine I use regularly doubles as a router + firewall for 5 computers. I connect on demand and think nothing of the PPPoE connection. Everything is completely transparent to any of the 6 computers. As for running one more piece of crap application in the background... well, 99.8% idle cpu isn't so bad.
yeah using a linky router it does work, but this speedstream modem gets diahrhea now and then and just craps out and SNET likes to say "no eta" on fixing our problems. but then again my router has been up recently for at least 3 weeks. pppoE eats AT LEAST 15-20 of your bandwidth though, its all overhead, i dont know what the overhead on a "normal" non-pppoE connection is. id prefer not to have pppoe, but hey, whatever, it does work doesent it? -n-rs-
I actually work for SBC (which, to be honest, is why I am anonymous... mmm paranoia) I use Telocity DSL, however, much to the chagrin of others. See, I get big $$$ discounts on phone lines and such, so I ordered another (for dialing INTO my computer). When they tried to push DSL on my, I informed them that I already had another. There was a pause and then, in the most horrorified and disgusted voice I have ever heard, the person taking my order said "You want with a competitor?!" And I said "Yes, they don't suck as much." (and will suck even less next year, when Telocity gets multiple static IPs. yay!) The SBC DSL plan is a big waste of time and money and I pity anyone who has it.
I'm using Earthlink DSL to run an Xwindows session to a university box. Three times in the past 48 hours I have had my sessions clobbered by an address change. I'm with you that at least I'm not running that crappy WinPoet stuff..
You tell people that they should pay more for services like static ips. So why pay for something that is easier for them to do and that GASP!!!, prevents them from segmenting their services in such a way as to charge some people more than others for so called special features they would otherwise have by default. Do you really think they have made your service any cheaper by charging others more? What they do is use their present service as their base line and charge people more for enabling those so called features they would have had before anyways and to top that off your home line requires that you log on to use the DSL. So they know when you are using it and that it is you. Sounds good, well guess what, now if you want a freind to visit and use your DSL line they have to have your DSL password on what would otherwise be an open LAN. While there is add on hardware to do this for you on local lans. Why give this power or spend the extra money? Where is the value to the consumer? Finally, the extra overhead in the DSL pipe for this protocol will make the connection slower. BTW: I have a beef with people who have no idea what they are talking about telling those who do they are whiners. Try reading a book on the topic before posting.
One of the other things the article fails to mention is that now ISPs will be responsible for doing the billing / collections for the actual DSL line, not Bell. In other words, your DSL won't be billed on your phone bill, but will be a part of your ISP bill. This sounds good, but it also means that your ISP now holds the Letter of Authority for that service, so you can never call SBC/ASI directly for support again. What will SBC pay your ISP for this service? $0.00, plus tax.
I know at least one ISP (mine) has dropped all sales for new Southwestern Bell DSL subscribers, and may, if SBC decides to convert existing subscribers as well, drop all service to Bell users. Thankfully, their T1 prices are cheap, and I'm in a Verizon area. (Never thought I'd be happy to be served by Verizon-after-screwing-up-GTE)
Oh, and to those who say "quit yer whinin, PPPoE don't suck that bad," I tell them: I don't care what you think about the protocol. It's my choice to pick an ISP who does not use what I consider to be an evil hack, ranking right up there with Network Address Translation. I like having a /28 to my home network, and being able to do whatever I want, and serve whatever I need, without interference from my ISP or a phone company with a pitiful excuse for management. If I'm paying for it and am getting what I want, it's not up to SBC, Verizon or anyone else to tell me to bugger off. There is no technological reason for this change, only a political one: GREED.
Oh, and Verizon, are you listening? These flames, too, can be directed at you. Fortunately, Verizon Online in Texas is DHCP and the former-GTE side has shown no indications of liking PPPoE. Most ex-GTE DSL subscribers still have a frame relay connection. :)
After they are gone, I have no idea what I will do.
Set up your own?
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
Yes PPPoE is that bad. It introduced new points of failure (RADIUS servers now can go down those shiny SMS servers do), removed a large degree of accountability and as such the script kiddies froliced over to sympatico, created congestion when they have system wide resets (users fight to dial in), stole some of your maximum transmission unit per packet, required users to switch/add additional software/hardware to their computers to make their connection seamless, destroyed the always on aspect of the service, required under Windows/Mac(OS8/9) quite a bit of tweaking of MTU and other settings to get best preformance.... The list goes on. After 8 months I switched to cable where they have a real ratified industry connection standard that works well. Sympatico was a lesson how not to deploy an access technology AND what cluelss service NOT to pick.
Cable is not perfect but at least it's standards based. Also if you happen to see ANY praise for Sympatico PPPoE the user is likely in Quebec where cable is not an option because of their brutal bandwidth upload/download restrictions.
I've seen a lot of people talking about how their Linksys Cable/DSL modem hides the PPPoE.
Unfortunately, Linksys does NOT support Linux. Even though the configuration is all done through a web browser, they do NOT support Linux. Even though the box says they support/require Netscape 4.x, the Linux version of Netscape does NOT qualify.
I know this makes absolutely no sense. But this is what I was told by Linksys customer service when I was having problems with my Cable/DSL modem.
My problem, incidently, was that I had javascript disabled (to kill all of the popups, popdowns, redirects to porn sites, etc.) and their pages lack the standard <noscript> clause to remind me to turn on javascript. This is apparently not a problem with MSIE, and the customer service person made it damn clear that my stupidity was why Linksys does NOT support Linux. I got the distinct impression that he would not be forwarding on my (polite) suggestion that adding that extra clause would reduce headaches for both of us.
YMMV, and I don't understand this attitude since other Linksys products had prominent notes on their boxes that they do support Linux, but for some reason they decided to be real *******s to Linux users for this box. Keep that in mind if you're counting on using one of these boxes to hide the PPPoE conversion - there may be a long-term plan to ultimately support a protocol which requires a MS box to "unlock" the upstream connection.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
i dont get it....
Anywhere but that store man... amazon has it for 99 bucks, and there's $15 rebate.
they don't want to cannibalize their leased line business. If you want to run a server, they want you to have a T1, not a DSL line at a fraction of the price.
Whoever reported this story didn't read it all the way. SBC provides the DSL telephone lines. They also offer an ISP service on the lines. They also allow other ISP's to use lease their lines to provide internet service from that third party company. The article says that they are considering changing the policy to make it so all the third party providers can only use PPPoE. The ISP part of SBC will still offer Static and PPPoE service. Yeesh.
Moj pojezd jedet v Stambul - eto cool,
No deneg net na obed - eto bad.
Kto mne pokazhet striptiz - tomu kiss,
A kto pokazhet kulak - tomu fuck.
Davaj, Lama, davaj,
Davaj, otrkyvaj svoj anglo-russkij slovarj.
Davaj, Lama, davaj,
Davaj, otkryvaj svoj anglo-russkij slovarj.
Kogda povsjudu ty svoj -- eto joy.
Kogda ty vsjudu odin -- eto spleen.
Kogda nikto ne zvonit - eto shit.
Kogda vokrug vsje ne tak - eto, eto
Davaj, Lama, davaj,
Davaj otkryvaj svoj anglo-russkij slovarj.
Davaj, Lama, davaj,
Davaj otkryvaj svoj anglo-russkij slovarj.
Kto nenavidit vojnu -- tot v plenu.
Iz dvux velikix kuljtur ja xochu sdelatj odnu.
Kogda vokrug vse pojut - eto good.
Kogda botinki ne zhmut - eto tozhe good.
Kogda rumjan karavaj - eto kaif.
Kogda na ulice maj - eto i jestj nasha life.
Davaj, Lama, davaj,
Davaj otkryvaj svoj anglo-russkij slovarj.
Davaj, Lama, davaj,
Davaj otkryvaj svoj anglo-russkij slovarj.
i got a long email back from my provider - linkline communications (www.linkline.com).
this link takes you to the email he sent me back...
http://www.gsf.org/linklineemail.txt
in short.. he is looking for people to help fight back against the SBC on this one....
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Get over it. You just set the connection to start up when you boot and reconnect automatically on disconnect (not that that ever happens with the SBC (Snet) PPPoE I've experienced). And yes, the software they supply (for windows) does suck, that's why there's alternatives (that rock).
How is this a bad thing for customers? I'm nowhere close to being an expert, but it seems to me that customers benefit from not being identifiable by a static IP. Doesn't it enhance privacy? According to the article, "PPPoE schemes make it easier for hackers to gain unauthorized access by seizing or guessing at dynamic addresses." Huh? Is it any harder to 'seize or guess' at static IP's? Once they know a static IP, isn't it easier to attack a specific target, or 'mark a favorite' victim? Again, I'm no expert, it's just seems obvious to me. I'm also not what you would call a fan of Bell, so it's not like I'm looking to justify this. But when "competing ISP's and (the ever-elusive) experts," try to inform me, I get a little skeptical. Not to mention that InternetWeek's about page doesn't exactly strike me as consumer-oriented. Judging by the other comments, it seems to me like a benefit to customers is being weighed against inconvenience to business. And while I doubt Bell's motives are so pristine, forgive me for not being sympathetic.
Okay, from the article I got that this is going on in Texas and California, and probably in most, if not all states in the Southwest. Is this happening anywhere else? U.S.-wide? Or is it just the southwest?
And yes, I did read the article... directly or indirectly SBC supplies 32% of the DSL connections in the U.S. But if you're in, say Maine, are you as likely to be affected by this?
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
The point is that with PPPoE and DHCP you are at the mercy of the lease.
They advertise that it is a static IP. In the AUL you are allowed to run anything but commercial servers. DHCP is only the means, at least for me, to notify the gateway--Telocity has a different type of modem--that my computer is up. I need to test more. I have heard others just using DHCP to initialize the gateway the first time. They then set up their computer to only use the static IP.
Six months isn't bad but there is nothing preventing them from setting a month/day/hour lease in the future if they decide they need to conserve IPs.
They probably already made sure they had enough IP's before deciding to only offer static IP's.
From looking up TELOCITY-1, TELOCITY-2, TELOCITY-3 and TELOCITY-4, I find they have 851968 addresses currently. Of course most everyone will be tight on IP's until we need to switch to IPv6.
Do you really trust companies like SBC?
This is why I went with DirecTVDSL. I only use SBC for the circuit.
I have Pacbell DSL, and was given a client called Enternet I was told I would have to use to connect. Of course no such thing should be required for a goofy DSL connection. The client is Windows only (maybe mac too). All the Enternet client is, is a stupid PPPoe frontend. Lucky for me, my cheapy Netgear router is capable of PPPoe connections, so I let the router connect.
alternate OS's what? It's Oses.
What would be nice is if people would just calm down a little about the PPPoE thing, and give a valid reason why it's bad.
Forget it, people can bitch about cable/dsl monopolies and PPPoE at the same time, no problem for them.
I'm in the same situation that you are. I'm DHCP, and if they make me change, I'll find another provider.
I think that one of the reasons they'd want to move folks to PPPoE is because, with DHCP, you can get more than one IP per DSL connection. All you have to do is hook your modem up to a hub, then plug multiple computers into the hub. When you turn each one on, it'll request an IP from the DHCP server, and the server will assign one. I only have one PC right now, but I've seen other people do this, and I've also heard that some businesses have really abused this little connection loophole. Using a router is more efficient from SBC's point of view because it only eats up one public IP. Still, I could see them still getting upset, and I don't necessarily blame them. At the ISP where I used to work, we sold basic DSL as a single-user service, period. If you wanted to connect more than one computer, you had to purchase a higher-priced product. This may sound harsh, but we were only clearing a few bucks a month on each sale, and more than one computer would more easily saturate the bandwidth. And DSL is so cheap on the customer end because the bandwidth is oversold so many times, but then, all "consumer" connections" are. If a customer wants all of that 1.54 MB/s to himself, then he needs to buy a T1.
Having said all that, I'll still switch if they do this to me. I've always wanted a static IP, and I've been considering DirecTV Broadband (formerly Telocity). I've also got other problems with SW Bell, such as their slow mail servers and less-than-top-notch tech support, so it won't be too hard for them to make me leave.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
"DHCP is not comparable with PPPoE."
You got that right DCHP hands out an IP and everything works. It doesn't get in your way and does the job.
PPPoE on the otherhand just ensures Piss Poor Preformance over Ethernet.
You have an always on connection to your Central Office (CO) (the telcos love to point this out in their commercials) the average user needs authetication because of what? No reason at all. All they want is an IP and network connectivity. Give the customer what they want and get the hell out of their way.
And before anyone puts out the What about oppertunities, competition or choice of providers PPPoE provides I say this.
1) You are now dependant on the telco for another thing.
2) How many want to play the six thousand broadband ISP's game when your modem is capped and there isn't a thing the competition can do to change it?
3) Does the average user really need multiple ISP's? Do you use multiple Telco's for the local service on your landline?
4) Most business DSL packages don't include PPPoE because they techies would never recomend it. If it isn't good enough for business why should you the home user be shafted with it?
LOL...got me, I admit it. Nice one.
Carousel is a lie!
Uh? I have a static IP with an italian (!) dsl provider, but still use pppoe. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, pppoe is not the end of the world at all -- and you can get cool routing/firewalling gear that supports pppoe for as low as $120 (linksys). sbc's fault is changing protocol on their established customers, not picking pppoe.
Also, the main reason they used it up here (in Canada) is so that competing ISPs can resell DSL service. You can even have multiple accounts on one line. For example, you can be user@isp1.com, user@isp2.com and even connect to your work network at user@workplace.com (even at the same time). At least this is the reason they give.
What would be nice is if people would just calm down a little about the PPPoE thing, and give a valid reason why it's bad.
Could you guys perhaps use an hour or so reading up on PPP, ATM, DSL technologies and the different issues an ISP will have to tackle in order to provide you with your beloved bandwidth? PPPoE isnt bad, PPPoE doesnt prohibit static IP. DHCP is not comparable with PPPoE. The comparison would have to be between PPPoE (over AAL5) (or PPP over AAL5) and IP over AAL5 the RFC1483 way. Compare the tree and decide what you would implement if you were to make money in that buisness and had to plan for 100.000+ customers. The only real viable solution is PPPoE over AAL5.
PPPoE is acceptable for the majority of the unwashed masses. However, if you want to do anything really creative (and have an inkling of what you are doing) it starts to really get in the way.
Such as?
PPPoE connections are the same as any other network connections, you just use, gasp, PPP. I have PPPoE and I cannot think of ONE THING I cannot do on the net that someone without PPP can.
-- iCEBaLM
this is just a test. please ignore
If every DSL line provider had their way, unless you were paying a very pretty penny, they'd want to drop you in a PPPoE modem pool, give you a dynamic IP, and limit your line to as little as possible.
The same thing is happening now with DSL that began to happen with modem dialup to the internet about six years ago. We began with a static IP address then, and we were always getting the best performance we could out of our 28.8 modem, because few people were connecting to the web. Suddenly when the influx of people started coming in (about a year and a half later), we were dropped into a modem pool and were often getting less-than-optimal transfer rates.
Same thing's happening with DSL now. Our provider, Qwest, advertised 640K rates on their lines for about six months now on their most basic line access. Now, they've dropped the basic line back to 256K, even though their still delivering 640K to those who bought that line (though I don't know for how long...the service agreement said that they reserve the right to drop bandwidth at any time). All their other lines (with a static IP and guaranteed speeds) are getting about a %12 raise in price come August 7th.
Now that broadband is starting to gain speed (finally), the DSL providers are finding that their profit margins are falling because they've promised too much to too many. Since there's nothing better offered for that kind of money at the moment (gosh darn it, where's satellite service when you need it most), they can get away with it, and they will.
Hey, I know where you are coming from.
I live in Ashburn, VA. The fastest we can get is 128/128 IDSL (ISDN over DSL).
And I live about 4 miles from AOL HQ.
Dirk
Anyone?
Me too, and it still blows chunks. The only advantage is not having to use that stupid dialup thing.
When I first try to pull up a web page, it takes a few seconds as the router connects, and then after that it's fine. That's all there is to it.
I bought this new car, and although I have to push it down the street to get it started, once the engine turns over, it's fine.
PPPoE gets rid of one of the features of DSL that has been advertised: ALWAYS ON. Bullshit. PPPoE, no matter how fast the client negotiates, is NOT always on.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Three months?!?!?! Yeesh, If I had gone that long, I would have been at the CO with an axe and garden shears demanding action or their fibers were going down!
Actually, I give the phone campany a reasonable time [three days, four if it is a weekend or holiday] then I would be camping in their office. Of course, i deal with them all the time, so i know the only way they will ever do anything is if you make yourself the biggest pain in the butt possible.
As an aside, I do not like the direction of mega companies controlling all access. I will go with the little guys and spend more money as long as I can. After they are gone, I have no idea what I will do.
Yep, get a linksys router and it works like a charm. Who needs a static IP when you only have 128 upstream anyway
This is not a Sig.
I bought this new car, and although I have to push it down the street to get it started, once the engine turns over, it's fine.
More like: "I bought this new car, and although I have to turn a key to get it started, once the engine turns over, it's fine."
More moderator crack!
Please mod this up!
I'v had DSL for over a year now and it was originally installed as PPPoE using a Windows only proprietary RedBack client to establish the connection. I have used other PPPoE methods (Linux, DSL router) to establish connections and they have "almost" worked. I usually have 5 or 6 systems running behind a WinNT4.0/SP5 system running EnterNet (the SBC client) with a firewall and a commercial internet sharing program. Biggest problem I have is that I can't run more than one internal system over a PPPTP VPN to work (I'm a telecommuter). The SBC server resets my connection about once a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. According to one of the folks I talked to when I was going through the typical(?) 3 month installation process, PPPoE was used so that the DSL connections would work just like the dialups and they wouldn't have to muck around with their basic services. PPPoE wasn't a hot ticket then and a propietary client was the quickest implementation. So, let's see... This comment goes from an internal system ethernet packet which gets NAT'ed on the firewall, then is wrapped for PPP, then is wrapped again for PPPoE, put onto ethernet for a DSL modem which wraps the ethernet to ATM, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.... I don't even want to think about the VPN wrappers.
Does the income I've derived from working with Unix belong to SCO?
Hey jackass,
/ X11/wilco/VNC/serviceX/serviceY/serviceZ
Just because you aren't dissatisfied doesn't mean that this is something everybody will learn to accept.
I use "bridged" DSL. My firewall (OpenBSD), does all my routing, filtering and NAT. I currently have two static IPs.
What will I lose by moving to PPPoE you ask?
1) If OpenBSD cannot do PPPoE, or cannot establish connections with the ISP, no more packet filtering, and no more NAT.
1a) If it *can* work, then my filtering rules will largely need to be reworked to use logical interface names instead of IPs, and a number of anti-DoS rules that depend on my local segment info are useless.
2) No more static IPs
3) My inbound mail. Unless I use some kind of kludgey dynamic DNS crap, I'm screwed. Now I get to use someone ELSE's mail server. How nice.
4) My web-server. Nobody can find it since its address keeps changing. See above.
5) My quake-3 server. See above.
6) Inbound ssh/irc/dns/pop/imap/snmp/talk/netbios/news/xdmcp
...you get the idea.
So just because you're not impacted, doesn't mean jack shit.
Perhaps its just that as a knowledgeable "power user", I like to have complete control of the traffic that deals with my IP and my DNS. Perhaps you simple folk just need "the internet to be up", but for a large number of us, having our ISP service brain-damaged to the point of high degress of uselessness is just not acceptable.
I quit Qwest for precisely this reason, and have been THRILLED with Speakeasy.net's superior service and support ever since.
GO SPEAKEASY!
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
There is a saying among old telecom people: "If the telephone company were to sell sushi, they would advertise it as 'Cold, Dead Fish.'"
SBC has once again proven this cold adage with its silence about the switchover from Virtual Circuit/Virtual Path routing of DSL to PPP Aggregation. Nothing on the SBC web site. Nothing from the "customer service" people. Nothing from the ISP, as they are in the dark as much as the customers. As the first northern Nevada customer of DSL (Nevada Bell) I'm facing this changeover and am not happy about it.
The bottom line is that something has to change. The fact is, DSL provisioning is a crock bordering on kludge. To understand this assertion, let's take a look at the overall block diagram for DSL provision:
The DSLAMs connect to an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network. In bridging mode (what I and many others in SBC-land who use an independent ISP have today) the data from the DSLAM port makes its way to the ISP using VC/VP channels that are nailed up. Once the circuit is nailed up, the number of CPU cycles required to switch 56-byte packets is very small indeed.
The independent ISP offering DSL connectivity needs a circuit into the ATM network, which for all practical purposes means getting at least a DS3 and an appropriate ATM switch/router. Assuming 40 megabits/s per DS3, you can handle 104 users of 384/128 DSL service, or 27 users of 1.5/384 service, at a time. With 10x oversubscription (low rate) that's 1000 and 270 users. With 50x oversubscription, that's 5200 users. Or is it?
ATM network was designed to handle relatively few channels at high speed. To this end, the address fields in ATM packets are short. With some horsing around, you can get about 1000 circuits per ATM link (and that DS3 counts as an ATM link). That means you cannot use a single channel for all customers. The actual ceiling is lower when you take into account routing problems, with a lower limit of about 250 channels.
The net result is that if you are an ISP you have to have multiple DS3 channels when your user base grows above a certain level. At $5K/month a pop, this limits the ability of the ISPs to control costs per port, which would tend to keep prices high. This is bad for the customer because it keeps prices high, it's bad for the ISP because it keeps costs high, and it's not all that swift for the ILEC...
Ever wonder why it takes so long to provision a bridging DSL circuit? One of the things I found out is that provisioning a single circuit requires an amazing amount of ATM network programming...in a process that is frankly broken. In the old days, BD (before DSL), the number of times the ATM network needed to be configured in a month could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and that hand could have taken a trip through a thresher or combine and still do the job. With the deployment of DSL, the fragility of the tools used to nail up circuits in the ATM network were exposed. There was a time when I could tell that Nevada Bell made another DSL sale: my DSL would stop working. The delay isn't in making the connections, it's finding open channels in every single link to use for the connection. Extensive bookkeeping.
So SBC decided to move to Point-to-Point Protocol Terminated Aggregation, replacing the VP/VC architecture that is currently in use.
So why didn't Ms. Semilof publish all this information? I wanted to know, and called her. She said that SBC wasn't forthcoming with information to give their side of the story. When I tried the usual press channels, I too got stonewalled. It took a call to a good buddy to get the information I need to generate the information showned above. Yep, once again SBC proves that the telephone companies don't know how to market.
Let's look at some of the hot-button items that other people have mentioned in this discussion.
Static IPs: The availability of a fixed IP address depends on how each particular ISP wants to handle things. If the ISP wishes to manage all aspects of authentication, Internet presence, and bandwidth control in the manner they do today, they can use L2TP tunneling over ATM to exchange traffic from user to ISP. The ISP's RADIUS server can serve up "sticky" IPs to emulate the static IP addresses many of us enjoy. It would be up to the customer to keep the PPPoE circuit alive if the customer is running servers at the CPE end of the circuit; not hard, but something on the list of things to do.
MTU problems: PPPoE has a nasty habit of forcing a smaller MSS than anyone expects, because of the packet overhead of PPPoE itself. This has been dealt with in many places, and the solutions are pretty well known.
Performance hits: Well, yes. Adding layers of protocol will cause slowdowns. There is another [active] router in the way, too. Expect ping times to go up. (Sorry, gamers, if you really want good ping time you will be forced to a T1 type solution.) Throughput will be affected, too, although I don't know by how much.
ISP concerns: In the current situation, it's a real hassle to switch from one ISP to another. When I switched away from NBI to my current provider, the process took 7 days, 1 day of which my DSL was completely out. With the changeover to PPPoE, though, the only thing a customer has to do is change the PPPoE login sequence. The ISP never knows the customer is going away until s/he calls to close out the bill. I discount the cost problems associated with the switchover, although most ISPs are running such razor-thin margins that the couple of thousands of dollars this will cost them in new equipment will hurt, hurt, hurt. (The gain is that the ISP can increase the oversubscription rate and thus lower running costs, which makes that couple of thousand in equipment plus technician time an investment.) Another concern is the lost of VPN business, as PPPoE lets an enterprise participate so that telecommuters can log in directlywith the company during the day to work (bypassing the ISP), then log into the ISP at night to play.
You apparently don't know about Option82 and 'lease limit', which will let you limit the DHCP leases a customer's connection will let you receive.s g11269.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/dhcp-server@isc.org/m
One of the reasons why I got broadband was so I didn't have to deal with dialing up & logging on every time I wanted to web surf. With cable internet, the connection's always on, I just fire up my browser & go. PPPoE reverses that - it forces users to log in if they want to surf the web. What a pain.
For all the sysadmins out there. Is there a genuinely good reason to set up a network with PPPoE rather than just letting them use ordinary ethernet, cable modem or DSL networking? It just sounds retarded to me.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
LOL! Anyone else out there read this in a Darth Vader voice? "THERE IS NO CONFLICT."
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Sad.
There is a simple solution for ISP's if they are concerned about people abusing DHCP by saying they are only gonna have one system but then plugging in more than 1. (but with DHCP ISP's I have never heard them ask how many system I am hooking up). The solution is too hand out only static IPs. That way they are controlling how many computers are actually being attached to their network. So if someone wants another static they pay for it. So that person may or maynot go out and get some sort of firewall/nat server setup so they can share that 1 static IP. Personally that is what I am doing. To bad some some script kiddies like to pounce on my NAT server. It is sorta funny to watch what the logs produce.
Silly Rabbit...Sig's are for kids.
So why doesn't this article get tagged with a US flag? This is regional if anything on /. is, and I really don't give a shit what happens in the states.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
From Verizon.
And it doesn't suck.
Millions of /.'ers gasp in astonishment.
I mean, I use a Linksys router that has the PPPoE firmware installed. This means that i have a static IP anyway as the router uses a Keepalive and is never turned off. This is almost no different from DHCP. If your machine is not connected when the address is renewed, you don't get that IP address. Period.
Static IP's I can understand, but the people who really need them can pay for them. *GASP!* Heresy!
Yes, low-cost high bandwidth is what we want, but not necessarily what we will get. Yet. As I'm fond of saying, Joe Q. User who buys Compaqs at Best Buy with WinME installed will think nothing of a PPPoE connection. And that's if he even goes beyond his 53.3K POTS connection.
Taking out the SBC executive board would take far too lone with a Basball bat. And they're Texans, too Dumb to know they are dead... Someone needs to send to a board meeting on of those misplaced Russian Thermoneuclear Demolision charge on a short timer...
I'm with Bellsouth, and get PPPeO. Other than a few problems with the Ethernet out of the box it wirks. I get a new IP every 24 hours... and no chance of static IP. I wish I could get an "enhanced" service for $65 a month, and get a bridged service with a small segment (/29 maybe). For SBC folks that are complaining... it could be worse.
Residential ADSL (according to the companies that supply it) is intended for those who want fast downstream access. You want to serve, get SDSL or pay for the higher grades of ADSL. You'll get your static IP.
It can be construed that the people who want static IP's for serving purposes are just trying to skirt the "commercial" vs. "residential" issue. I'm not saying it's a fact, I'm saying it's a possible parallel. Now consider that as you utilize more bandwidth, the cost of your connection to Verizon/SBC/et al goes up. They then desire to pass this on to you. A way around it is to gimp those that use it in ways that they hadn't counted on.
This means they nerf your pretty little static IP.
Now all the keening and wailing about "I DON'T WANT PPPoE!!" for those who are DHCP'ing doesn't make sense to me. /.'ers are a technical group. I'm pretty sure most of the people around here have networking experience and have no problem buying a $100 4 port router.
If you don't have the money, or are that intent on having a pseudo-static IP from DHCP, vote with your feet and don't buy the service.
From what we've seen about this from SBC, this move to PPPoE is for residential services. The twerp who buys some eMachines Celeron machine with 32 megs of RAM and goes "duh, maw, I gots us a 'puter!" and not the business end customers that will continue to DHCP and have static IP's. If that's what you're paying for, it's what you'll get. If you don't want to pay for it, go find someone else.
Don't take it personally.
While my system at home is a cable modem; my coworkers are having lots of problems with our corporate IPSec software if they run PPPoE.
That sounds like you bought crappy software and didn't check it out before you bought it. IPSec works just fine over PPP and PPPoE. In fact, it shouldn't even be messing with the PPP frames, just like it shouldn't be messing with the Ethernet frames. It shouldn't know or care what it is being run over. It playes with TCP frames, nothing else. If it was then it is a problem with the IPSec software, not PPPoE. PPPoX, Ethernet, ATM, etc, should all work at the lowest level, the IPSec should be in the lowest level of the IP stack. Don't blame PPPoE because your software sucks.
By and large I've used PPPoE for about a year now, and have never had a problem doing anything "creative". Maybe you'd just prefer a regualar old, ethernet connection, which is your choice. But no one ever gets what the choose. The system provides you with a routable IP address and a place for the IP Packets to flow through, which is all you really needed to talk to the rest of the world. If you need anything else to be creative, then something is drasticly wrong.
DSL: like logging into a dial-up connection, capped 40-50k transfer rates, ALWAYS going down(loss of service), online tech most probably pulled off the street, aka new shit, no help. CABLE: connection always on, 250+k transfer rates, mostly up, cable guy comes out within hours of call or next day on reporting a problem(everytime I've called- there's a line problem they're working on outside of my building). Pop quiz: which one of these is a service?
I'm running five computers off of my cable modem from AT&T@home with one static IP.
It's called Network Address Translation, and Linux has been able to do it for years.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''Most DSL hardware I've had contact with (RedBacks for example) add a circuit ID to the DHCP request when they forward it (this was a working group draft three years ago, I expect it is in an RFC now). If you make your DHCP server limit the number of addresses given to any circuit ID that problem goes away. The DHCP server I wrote for (large-ISP-name-withheld) did that. That server could also force an IP address change every X hours.
I don't know of any ISP that doesn't oversubscribe T1's as well (as in 1000Mbits of T1's into the HUB, only 45Mbits of T3 out to other hubs -- except with far higher numbers on both sides nowadays). They just end to have something like a 2x to 5x oversubscription on T1s, but 100x or more on DSL.
Anyway, I don't see how PPPoE provides more addresses for them, unless those "always-on" connections aren't. Are they now admitting to false advertising?
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
This is nothing compared to what they've done before. I used to work for a regional ISP that resold SWB's DSL. They gave us access to their prequalification tools, which we used to assess availability of services when someone enquired
It would give results as green, orange or red. Most often it came up red.
We didn't think anything of this until we started getting phone calls. It turned out almost everyone who came up red would get a postcard from SWB within two weeks telling them about this wonderful new DSL service that had just become available in their area.
We refused to sell SWB DSL after that point on principle.
All the new swbell connections are now pppoe, but some of us got in before they switched to that. If they switch, as much as I hate timewarner, I just might switch to cable. You lose about 20% of your bandwith to pppoe overhead. It's also more cpu intensive and harder to deal with. On top of that, they don't support Linux, so if you have any problems, your SOL if you use it. (It is possible to use it with Linux though.) Support from them sucks for Windows anyway. So much so I stopped recommending them long ago even for people using Windows.
Let's see, lower bandwidth, more connection problems, no support for my OS, and more cpu cycles...Yeah, this is a great deal me!
-nt-
PPPoE will reduce your data transfer rates because you have to use some of your bandwidth for the PPP header information. Every time you encapsulate your transmissions in a new protocol, you loose some performance, because you must process the protocol headers, and the headers for each protocol eat up bandwidth.
I don't really understand what the outrage is about. Sure, PPPoE is a hack, you lose 1% of your expensive bandwidth to useless control information, and dialing up on a connection advertised as "always on" is pretty damn lame. In practical terms, however, it's not the monster some readers here make it out to be. I've had a Verizon PPPoE line for over a year now, with alternately a BSD or an NT box happily keeping a 24/7, always on, no user intervention required connection used by a number of other machines on the home LAN. No "router firmware" someone mentioned, no "manually dialing up", no "waiting for the browser to open the first page", no problems.
:)
I think the real issue here is simply the hurt pride that comes with being forced by a monopolistic provider to use an overtly dumbed-down consumer solution and knowing that it could have been - and was, for a short time - better. I'd, however, take a 1.5M PPP link over a 53k one any day and not be too bitter about it considering the improved price/performance ratio.
The main bitch I have with PPPoE is the connection software: NTS, Network TeleSystems (the morons who wrote it) refuse to give feature parity for both the Windows and the Mac clients, citing "we're looking into it." The Mac client still doesn't have auto redial, whereas the Windows one has had it for a long time. And it took them over 6 months to get OS9 compatibility.
However, in OS X, Apple included a PPPoE module for the dialer, and it works great! No more Roaring Penguin.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I use an SBC DSL line with a third-party ISP, and I know the people who run this ISP, so I actually know what I'm talking about. The reason SBC wants to force everyone to use PPPoE is simple: they want to take away all the advantages that third party ISPs can give to customers.
My ISP doesn't use PPPoE, and they give everyone a static IP address. These two features, along with the fact that this ISP has several upstream providers (unlike SBC, which has exactly one) and is run by competent and knowledgeable staff, is what makes it an attractive alternative to the local SBC ISP. If you go with SBC's ISP, you have to settle for PPPoE regardless, and they charge an additional 40 bucks a month for a static IP.
With the new ISP contracts SBC is forcing everyone to use, third party ISPs won't be allowed to give out static IP's. Yes, it's technically feasible to do so, but SBC won't let them. So there will be fewer reasons for anyone to go with a third party ISP.
It's a great model: rather than adding features to your own product, just take away features from your competitor's.
Because when using PPPoE, they can force all sorts of nonsense on you:
1) Changing IPs. No one wants this crap. If you plan to run any kind of server at all over your (capped at a crappy 128kbps) connection then you need a static IP. Hell, if you want to VNC into your box you need a static IP. Yes, those dynamic dns services can help but they are still not as simple and easy as a plain static IP.
2) Needs PPPoE support on your hardware. If you plan to share your connection you are out of luck if the router doesn't have PPPoE built in. While a lot of the newer ones do, many older cable/dsl home routers do not. That means you need to pick a box and run every other computer through it with some lame crap like Internet Connection Sharing.
3) Need PPPoE support in software. We've had earlier stories on Slashdot about PPPoE and SBC making funny little changes that made it harder for non Windows/Mac users. But even if it works right now, what's to say it will always work that way if they don't officially come right out and say they support alterate OS's?
4) Waiting to connect...very very damn irritating when you just want to read something and you have to wait for PPPoE to sign in. Admittedly faster but still why should we have to? SBC owns enough IPs to last forever. We also go instantly back to those happy days of running programs to fake internet activity to keep from getting kicked offline for being idle.
I signed up with PacBell and a one-year contract and got a static IP. Three months later I was unable to connect and the tech support seemed incredulous that I wasn't on PPPoE. No amount of effort and energy would get me put back on static because I foolishly did not get it in writing before I signed up (at the time, I had no reason to believe PacBell had any interest in forcing current customers to PPPoE even though I knew a couple months after I signed up that new customers were PPPoE only). I ended up having nothing but trouble because of various PPPoE related problems and finally got out of my contract by telling them I was moving to the Bay Area and the local PacBell didn't have any open ports to provide me with DSL service.
I'm still stuck with an Wirespeed DSL modem. I should probably put it on eBay or something.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I have no real issues with PPPoE for those who don't mind using it--my Mom uses it because she doesn't need a static IP. The connection time isn't that big a deal, and there's no measurable throughput loss.
My problem is that for security purposes I require a static IP (for example, I only allow FTP connections to my colo'ed server machine from certain IPs), and I purchased service from my value-added ISP under certain terms of service that I pretty much expected would last forever until something better came out.
Now both I and my ISP are getting the rug pulled out under us because of SBC's greediness. None of us would be complaining about the change in TOS if something better was coming along, but instead SBC is fucking us over because they want to push their own content over a line that is supposed to be contain only data I send or request between me and my ISP.
This isn't about address allocation (my ISP has plenty of IP addresses for its customers), this is about corporate greed and taking advantage of a monopoly. I'll say it once or a thousand times; "he who owns the infrastructure will never compete fairly."
this means that telocity will have to change to dinamic ip how are they going to do that with the dsl modem that they have
This is completely off topic (and is likely to be moderated as such), but that sig made me laugh out loud. And I'm not easily amused.
For those that have sigs turned off:
Spews from birds: Stuff that splatters.
All you need now is a name for your new scatalogical forum...
I would pay, but even in the face of my willingness to pay, my ISP won't provide me with a static IP address. Why they leave money on the table is beyond me. It's a bit frustrating.
I doubt your ISP is incompatible with some OSes, they just don't tell you how to set them up. But that and more can be fixed with the Linksys Etherfast router - i has automatic connection/reconnection over PPPoE and a DHCP host that works with any OS supporting DHCP.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
The problem is not that PPPoE cannot assign static IPs, it can. The problem is that SBC intends to use PPPoE to force third party ISPs to only assign dynamic IPs. They can do this since PPPoE gives them control of the IP addressing elements of the protocol and takes it away from the third party resellers. It will also allow SBC to gather usage data that before stayed with the third party ISPs. PPPoE is really only useful if this was there intent. There are other ways to limit the allocation of IPs which is why they say they want them to use it. Telocity's Gateway modems limit you to one static IP via DHCP, for instance.
They shipped a copy of TurboLinux with my DSL firewall/router. Not only that, but I didn't seem to have any issues with either Konqueror, Netscape, or Mozilla.
Realize that customer support comprises some companies hiring clueful people and other companies farming it out to "support" companies that run by a script. Step outside the script, and blooey- you're not supported.
It's WHY I rarely if ever call customer support.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...much to the delight of /.ers everywhere... ;)
That's just nonsense. It's just as easy to set up multiple DHCP providers on a network - I do it all the time for clients. Since DHCP provides a lot more than just an IP address and a gateway IP (printer IP, etc.), I can use multiple DHCP servers (running Linux) to serve multiple business units with their own set of server addresses.
Truth is, PPPoE is a horrible hack. It's useless. There's *nothing* you can do with PPPoE that I can't do with DHCP except authntication, and tht I can do with MAC addresses anyway, just like BellSouth does it.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
I've been a residential DSL user in Florida since April 2000 (Bellsouth). At installation, the company offered me what was available then: a bridged DSL connection using ethernet and dhcp. With a couple of minor exceptions, the link has been rock solid since the day they turned it on. (My downlink speeds hang in the 1.2Mb range...very fast)
This is in contrast to a large number of subscribers added to the system since, who have had to use PPPoE and USB-based DSL modems. Combined with sometimes abysmal on-site installations and questionable technical support, it's been less than fun for those people. Add on this the lack of support for Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/similar systems (and even problems with Windows 2000 as well). It ain't been easy, esepcially for the less technically adept. Things are supposed to be improving, however...
I've heard rumors about a switch from bridged to PPPoE service throughout the area, but it hasn't materialized yet. In fact, you can still get a bridged setup if you're willing to pay for the external modem (or buy one) and the extra fee for a truck roll and installation on site.
The address assignment systems seems pretty fair: the dhcp server on their network does a renewal about every 12 hours. IPs don't change often, but it's not an issue for me.
I don't know if this will become an issue here (yet) as many of the independent DSL providers have gone the way of all flesh since the dotcom purges last year.
But, I still get nervous when another big bell does this kind of thing, as I fear it will give mine evil ideas.
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
I'm not sure why we didn't do that. Well, DSL in our case was a product that we were never sure what to do with, partly because we were getting bought out at the time, and things were in flux, and partly because of difficulties in dealing with Bell. We'd ask potential customers how many computers they planned to connect and steer them to the product that allowed that many. We wouldn't have been able to tell, but they often didn't know that.
As for the script kiddies, I know what you mean. I don't have a router, but I do run a software-based firewall, and I'm always watching to see what it catches. The little morons just keep probing away with their port scanners, figuring they'll find something open, but they never do. I usually leave them alone, but if one gets persistent, I'll send my logs to his ISP. There's some jerkoff on SW Bell's DSL network in this same part of the state, maybe even the same city, who drops in every now and then. One of these days, I'm going to get up on the wrong side of the bed and go after him with a vengence...with SW Bell, of course.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
I'm on cable, no PPPoE, and I have a static IP. This allows me to host www.acerbic.org out of my living room. I do this without any kludges and if I happen to reboot my machine or have a power outage I don't loose my IP when I come back online. You can't do that with PPP.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
I don't think the issue is about dynamic IP assignment... dhcp works fine for that. Isn't that the worst? Wasted biting sarcasm?
Inconceivable!
Static IPs assigned by PPPoE? Now you're using all the overhead of a PPPoE connection just to assign the same IP over and over. It's not like you've in any way stopped it from renewing the same IP or changed the connection method. You still need additional software that's running in user-space. This is ridiculous, needed solely because the company won't pay for a real router. Damn shame.
Dissapointing, even so. How about adding value, SBC, by actually adding value? Like keeping your servers up and running? (My in-laws are SBC aDSL PPPoE customers and not terribly happy with it. My tiny San Francisco-based ISP is a thousand times more reliable, and not only because a geek actually answers the phone.)
Grrrrr.
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there. -- Richard Feynman
Earthlink allows for static IPs and they use PPPoE.
I have SBC/PacBell and I have PPPoE. That's the only way to connect to thier residential service. I had originally ordered thier enhanced DSL, but...Don't get me started on that!
"I think you know what I'm talkin' about, Mr. President; We're gonna kill us a mummy!" - Bruce Campbell as Elvis Presley
Well if they have regular intentional outages by design, then their claiming that they offer 24x7 always on service could likely be considered fraud.
Do you ever get cut off, and it takes minutes or hours before it will allow reconnecting?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I currently have DHCP on my current DSL service through SBC, and Southwestern Bell as my telephone provider, as well. If they force-convert me over to PPPoE, it's overhead and unholy proprietary client, I'll just cancel all my services with Soutwestern Bell* and get Sprint ION, which has been available here for some time, to replace both telephone lines and DSL, turning a $100/month revenue stream to a competitor. I'm sure there are others. Bring it on, SBC.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
~~~
It could be because there's other, better ways of dealing with those problems that doesn't translate into slower MTUs and non always-on connection (If they run PPPoE, do you honestly believe they're leaving the link up with that assigned IP?).
DHCP works fine and in the context of what you're describing, anyone could set up their routers and DHCP system with minimal effort to achieve the same task and have to expend only as much effort as you would with the PPPoE solution (most likely less, if you think about it).
Multiple PPPoE providers? On the same Ethernet? You won't see that sort of thing happening with DSL- the system's not set up that way. You're given this segment that ties into an ATM cloud that shuttles your traffic, no matter whether or not you're a bridging or a PPPoE customer, to its specified destination. There isn't an ethernet segment there except at the endpoints of the system.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
When Speakeasy goes out of business along with Covad, or when Covad implements PPPoE to lower costs and stay in the game, you should try TZO. Very reliable DynDNS service. Yes, it's not free, but then again, it's either that or no more "power user" privilege.
About one year ago, they switched my service from DHCP to PPPoE without even telling me. One day my computer simply stopped getting an IP addres from the server, and no one could tell me why. It took over three months of calls to tech support before we figured out what the problem was.
(At this time, I will refrain from launching into a skreed about the state of SWB Internet tech support. Those poor pimply-faced high school kids have enough troubles without my criticism.)
I had no idea how terrible the PPPoE client for Macintosh was going to be. I fiddle with network configs all day long; I bought an iMac so I wouldn't have to do it at home, too.
Needless to say, I cancelled their service shortly thereafter and moved over to another ISP.
I can't say whether my experience is typical for the SBC "family of companies," but it was enough to get me to sign up with a different service provider for almost twice as much per month.
And every month I send them their check with a big smile on my face.
I got lucky and am "grandfathered in", so i'm still using dhcp. All the new users are on PPPoE.
Really, someone must have had their head screwed on a little less than tight with this one. PPPoE is a nice idea, and it's in fact a really clever hack, BUT IT'S NOT A GOOD METHOD OF CONNECTION. It's a clever hack in the same way that PPP-over-SSH is a clever VPN tactic, but if I were to suggest to my boss that we use PPP-over-SSH for the VPN on our corporate network I'd be laughed out of his cube. I don't know why some DSL companies (*cough Verizon cough*) think that this is a good idea over normal DHCP. In the meantime, I think I'll stick with the 10 static IPs that SpeakEasy.net will allow me with my home service using a normal ethernet router, thank you.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
I'm surprised at how clueless some comments are here on slashdot. Obviously, a lot of people complaining about PPPoE have never used it. I've been using PPPoE for over a year now, on a 1mbit DSL line provided by Sympatico (canadian ISP).
First, PPPoE allows uses of multiple IP addresses over a single modem. Kinda like what you get with a PPtP VPN. Not hard to do either. Plug the DSL modem in a switch/hub. Plug computers in said hub. Have each comp make a PPPoE connection. Each gets a separate ip.
As for the ip not being static... Well if you have a router that has PPPoE support in the firmware, and always leave it plugged, you indeed get a pretty static ip. I've been connected for months in a row and my ip never changed.
Some other people were complaining about... overhead! Now get serious. The overhead is so near zero that it's not in ANY way perceptible. Unless maybe you have a Gigabyte connection. My 1Mbit DSL always download at around 126k/s, which is the line's max throughput. Ok, in theory it's 128k/s, but I doubt many people would notice a 1k/s difference. And I'm not even sure it's caused by the PPPoE protocol, it might just be the line.
The only problem I've had with PPPoE is that it doesn't work for software that tries to communicate directly with your ethernet port. nmap is an example of this. It's extremely rare occurance though.
PPPoE isn't a bad solution for the user, really. Just the simplicity for having multiple computers with their own ip over the DSL is worth it for most users with more than one comp. And if the ISP is reliable, you'll keep your ip for months. I think most people are complaining just because it makes them feel nice to complain. Well... this is slashdot after all.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
Makes a lot more sense now.
Please, come out to my neighborhood and lay the cable for me, will you?
I've DSL from SWB for over a year and it's always been PPPoE.
PPPoE didn't save IP addresses in my case, with my previous DSL provider we just ran PPPoE on every machine, giving us a public IP for every machine!
If saving IP's is such an issue, instead of trying to force PPPoE on everyone, they should be using those resources to move thier infrastructure to IPv6.
First off, you're correct - I spoke a little early without doing any research on PPPoE for OBSD.
That said - my 'jackass' comment was geared simply at the fact that the original poster was being a jackass in that he said: "it doesn't suck - stop crying".
points:
1 - Large ISPs (including telcos) are against giving average users static IPs. Notice all the comments here and you'll see the consensus. This is true for Qwest and RMI here in Denver as well.
2 - directly from that link on OBSD/PPPoE:
"Don't complain if your xDSL connection drops occasionally, remember that OpenBSD doesn't have really stable PPPoE drivers yet, but I have gone for hours without a problem, so it really isn't that bad. I have found that if my connection is dropping fairly quickly, if I turn the modem off and on again the problems go away.dropping fairly quickly, if I turn the modem off and on again the problems go away."
Nice - I want a reliable connection. Throwing extra stuff in the mix that lessens that is bad, IMNSHO. Forget getting Linux/xBSD/etc support from your ISP if you cannot make it work. Time to scour the newsgroups and mailing lists hoping someone has already solved your particular problem.
So, couple those and my points are still valid, albeit only if the world isn't a perfect place. And guess what? It isn't. Telco-ISPs and the like aren't going to give you premium types of service if there is any way they can avoid it.
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
I agree with this completely. I also use SBC DSL through a third party ISP, and I also know the people who run the ISP. They are basically saying the same things. PacBell makes things as difficult for them as they can get away with.
Right now, I am paying around $10/month more to go through the third party ISP, but I get 1) a static IP, 2) MUCH better service (I can get the tech guys on the phone instantly, and they actually know what they are talking about), 3) a larger allocation on their web server for my web page than I would get with PacBell (I don't want to hasle with my own server even though I have DSL).
If they are forced to go PPPoE, it will remove one of these advantages, but the others will remain.
I am using DirecTVDSL (previously Telocity) over a SBC line. They only offer static IP. I still need to use DHCP to get the gateway to recognize that my computer is up, but the IP never changes. They even brag about it on their homepage.
On the downside, they offer only one IP total. You cannot get an additional static IP or even dynamic. Their "Connect and Protect" is not what it seems. It does not give additional routable IP's; it acts as a gateway for multiple machines as opposed to just a modem. A Linksys or Netgear router would do the trick. Personally, I use a FreeBSD box with a hub behind it. Firewall, mail server, web server, etc.
The next logical step is multi-devices on the same DSL circuit. Before long your cable-box will have an ethernet port, and it will log into the media access gateway to pull what ever channel you want...
PPPoE requires a separate piece of software to run to establish the connection. WinPOET is one of them on Windows.
It doesn't allow static IPs, which is a pain.
While my system at home is a cable modem; my coworkers are having lots of problems with our corporate IPSec software if they run PPPoE.
PPPoE is acceptable for the majority of the unwashed masses. However, if you want to do anything really creative (and have an inkling of what you are doing) it starts to really get in the way.
-chill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I presently use Bell Canada's Sympatico High Speed Internet here in Montreal, and it uses PPPoE. The service is pretty reliable, as long as I'm using the Mandrake 8.0 access software, and not the Windows Access Manager. Still, the access software I use now seems to be specific to the Mandrake 8.0 distribution, and I'm not sure if other distributions have such easy DSL access software. The access software still won't let me connect to my DSL automatically, even when I change the settings. I work for an ISP that competes with Bell Canada. They've just offered ADSL service, but, as far as I know, haven't gotten any customers because they're charging more than Bell. One of my coworkers was telling me there's a way to get a static IP address for ADSL access. I'll have to ask him about it again.
This space left intentionally blank.
We've had PPPoE in Ontario, Canada for some time with 1MBit ADSL modems. My experience is not as bad as some, and there seems to be a lot of FUD out there.
When we got it, the RFC was six to eight months old. No kernel support. No HOWTOs.
There was a userland program that fed packets in stdin and out stdout and took 30% of a decent CPU, or 80% of a 486 firewall machine. And there was a great kernel patch for 2.2.x that actually did the job (mostly) properly. To get a good connection, you had to apply the patch (horrors!).
But six months later, the software had matured. Now pppoe support is in the main branch for 2.2.x and 2.4.x, and all the big distros are set up to use it.
It was a couple of days of pain as I got all the necessary stuff together and prepared the gateway/firewall linux box so it would reconnect if the connection went down. But since then, the gateway has had hundreds of days uptime, and I don't notice the pppoe at all.
There's no "dialup" like some people are complaining about. Sure, the connection takes about ten seconds to occur, but my box only restores its connection once a week, and usually at 3am. No inconvenience there.
We all bitched and moaned at the time, but it's hard to bitch now that it's even a normal config option in the floppy-firewall distros! When I was a kid, we had to scribe the pppoe discovery packets by hand! Uphill! In the rain!
You guys must not like Ted Turner or something.I'm sitting here with a time warner cable connect and laffing at you guys with dsl.$40 a month,static ips,dhcp,real speeds of 1.5 down/600 up.Get over the dsl crap and get cable.
I am on PPPoE by sympatico in Toronto, they used to be DHCP. When they were, some people who wanted a static IP address would hard code their address. A couple of times they took one I happened to have been assigned by the DHCP server. When they did, my service sucked. One guy was running a pretty busy FTP server at this address. PPPoE fixed all that, however the service was really unreliable for a while.
BTW <A HREF="http://www.roaringpenguin.com/pppoe/">roa ring penguin</A> has a great userland PPPoE deamon that is rock solid. I have a Mandrake box operating as a router on my network - uptime is greater than six months right now.
nothing is real
My ISP tried this about a year ago... everyone was in bridging mode, and they wanted to switch everyone to PPP. They were running out of IP addresses, and thought that PPP would be a good solution. Another problem they had in bridging mode, was that they could not tell who was causing a duplicate IP if someone decided to put another person's IP on one of their machines. PPP was supposed to solve these issues. They faught with trying to get everyone moved to PPP mode, but it caused some incompatibilities with certain web services (online gaming, dialpad were two I knew about). They then reconsidered their move and encouraged people to go to PPP mode, but if they had a need to use bridging mode they let them stay with it.
I never did have to switch... :-)... They have been a pretty good ISP.
.:diatonic:.
When I first got DSL, I was kind of annoyed by PPPoE, but ever since I got a broadband router (Ugate 3200P), it is really invisible to me.
Changing IPs. No one wants this crap
Dynamic DNS is usually cheaper than a static IP (that I have seen- ISPs like to group static IP addresses with business service), and the broadband router I got comes with a year free DDNS service anyway.
Waiting to connect...
Even when I had software PPPoE, it took about 1 second to establish a connection.
Even though PPPoE is not ideal, its kind of necessary now (we all can't have static IPs now, can we- until IPv6 anyway), and it really doesnt affect me at all anyway. I could care less about a static IP now that I have dynamic dns, and all of the connection details are automatically handled by the router. The broadband routers on the market today are well worth the money for what you get.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Woohoo - lost a whole 8 bytes. PPPoE MUST be a disaster when it does that. Better call your lawyer.
As a DSL provider, I have to say that PPPoX is the *only* way to easily scale to huge DSL deployments and maintain at least a limited degree of security without sacrificing tons of bytes per user in configuration. By using PPPoE or PPPoX, despite the "overhead" the user has to deal with, you suddenly can treat all your DSLs just like dialup users -- and configure every DSL PVC identically and then deal with bandwidth allocation, IP address assignment, etc through RADIUS. The alternative is extremly painful for anything more than a few dozen users.
And it's not all that big of a headache on the user end, no matter how much people like to gripe about it.
-Chris
It works great !!! I don't know what u use there, but here before PPPoE, there was only PPTP for ADSL. And PPTP is a big big big bullshit ! More, since when PPPoE force u to change ur IPs ? Here (again), some providers offer static IP address with PPPoE connexion (though u get disconnected periodically, but rp-pppoe reconnects quickly afterwards). And i'm not even sure this disconnexion is mandatory in PPPoE....
Why is DHCP not even mentioned in this article? Your article doesn't even mention the fact that running PPPoE adds another layer on top of TCP/IP, making it less efficient than DHCP. Your article makes it appear that it's an issue of PPPoE/dynamic addressing versus static addressing, and this is simply not true. Dynamic vs. static is completely independent of PPPoE.
It's really an issue of DHCP vs. PPPoE, and since PPPoE adds another layer on top of TCP/IP, it's inherently less efficient, letting SBC offer DHCP while forcing everyone else to use PPPoE and being able to claim higher throughput.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
SBC has been PPPoE since inception in our area. (Southern California) Last week I was turning up a DSL install and had difficulty because they moved everyone from pacbell.net to sbcglobal.net. What a pain in the ass. PPPoE blows. We've also run into PPPoA too, which as I understand it is ATM.
PPPoE is not an always on connection. It's super-fast dialup for all intents and purposes- but they're advertising always-on. Either they need to drop the advertising saying that, or not bother with PPPoE.
Oh, and the only reason why PPPoE would be used is if someone were stupid and used their entire pool of fully routable IP addresses instead of NAT allocating everything they sell to the average customer under the class A and class B address blocks via DHCP or fixed allocation.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
PPPoE would save them IP addresses where there is more than one device connected through a DSL modem. If four of your buddies hook up to your intranet on PPPoE your DSL modem would assign internal IPs to their machines... versus the 5 real IPs you would be using on straight DHCP.
.:diatonic:.
News for turds. Shit that splatters.
As I recall the original was "stuff that splatters", which really works better.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Splashduck?
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
However, having a firewall which only allows the VPN box to recieve any packets from approved machines prevents not only attacks on the VPN product, but also any other vulnerabilities which the thing may have. Thus, it's still a good policy, and Just Makes Sense.
As for restricting road warriors' access -- the idea is quite attractive, until one takes into account that in many positions (ie. engineering) a great deal of access is needed to do *anything*. Admittedly, it would be quite possible (and perhaps a good idea) to keep a telecommuting engineer out of the sales or marketing systems -- but as we're planning to have a single integrated system for sales, marketing and bugtracking, that suddenly becomes a bit less plausable.
Before switching to Cable (only due to lower cost), I had ADSL with PPPoE for over a year. I never once had a problem with PPPoE. I logged in with FreeBSD originally, then switched to Linux. I'm not sure I see the issue with PPP, it's really only used for authentication purposes I would imagine...
Can someone clarify why PPPoE is an issue? I'm pretty sure any OS can handle it (as can some stand-alone DSL routers, etc), and I don't think there's any associated performance hit involved. I personally stayed connected (with same dynamic IP) for months at a time.
- Jman
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
My DSL is through Verizon, yet they are nice and give me DHCP access. It's great to have a LAN and be able to plug everybody's comp into a hub including the modem. Verizon doesn't care, they even suggest it on their website as a way to split the net connection! It's cheaper than a router, and all the Windows comps just run ZoneAlarm. Heck, even my Linux machines automatically setup my net access once get the ethernet card up. I doubt PPPoE will let me do what I'm doing now.
That is the most rediculous thing i have read this morning. (And believe me, i've been up for about 20 or 30 minutes, and I'm a fast reader. =P ) Could the author of that have written anything more bass-ackwards?
Because it doesn't get in the way of an existing DHCP network. Really. It shouldn't get in the way of existing PPPoE networks, but since many PPPoE stacks are set to accept any server, I expect they actually will by default.
So imagine you have a bunch of machines at home set up to use DHCP, some of them would like to reach the global internet, others don't (say, your printers), and all of them would like to be pointed at your local printers, and your local nameservers. You can do that with DHCP. Unless you get a DSL connection from someone who insists on sending DHCP replies out that point everyone at the global net, and don't set printers, and set the wrong nameservers, and...
Plus you can use two (or more) PPPoE providers on the same ethernet, which is very hard to do with DHCP-based DSL.
The down side is stacks didn't evolve as fast as thought (in part because someone dumb in management at one of the companies that wrote the RFC didn't allow the implementations to be shared freely). It also has an MTU slightly (2 bytes?) smaller then straight ethernet, which was needed to allow multiple sessions on the same ethernet.
If I want to do anything the least bit complex I would fr rather have PPPoE. If I don't want to think at all DHCP is a slight edge.
It seems odd that so many slashdot readers want the not-thinking solution, but I guess DHCP is the older protocol, and it almost solves the problem, so hey, everyone's got it in their heads that it is better.
Think about it this way, it does a job DHCP can't quite do, basically the same job L2TP does, but with 150 pages less RFC (then L2TP). The PPPoE RFC is also shorter then DHCP, but I wouldn't expect that to be a big deal because a modern system will need both, but can get away with skiping L2TP because PPPoE exists.
Barbarians.
slashdot moderators are so fucking dumb
This looks to me like a way for Bell to squeeze ISPs out of their "advanced" market. I suspect that that will then be followed by a price hike. Sigh.
Wow. I get a full 1.5/384 for 45$ CDN a month (actually it's free, my parents pay). I seem to be one of the few people in the area who doesn't use PPPoE, but I have an etherfast router (which will fix any ISP/OS compatibility problems), and no, I didn't have pppoe before I got the router (although it's possible the DSL modem I have does it, but I never have to wait to get on)
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
I live in Chicago and just got an SBC ADSL connection because they were the only broadband solution available at the time. Yes the PPPoe situations sucks. Two days after I got my connection, I went to Best Buy, laid out about $120 dollars for a router:
& sc at=&e=11008648
http://www.bestbuy.com/Detail.asp?m=488&cat=540
It has all that crap in firmware, and I have enjoyed an always on connection for four separate computers ever since.
Well worth the price, it is a router/switch so it's all you need to buy.
I know why I love my cable!
------
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
This has probably already been said but just in case anyone is counting I'll put in my two cents. PPPoE is not good, but its not bad either. Asside from some oddities it really is what is sounds like, a ppp connection over ethernet. Its up to your provider to give you a static IP, its not a limitation of PPPoE. You can get a PPP dialup connection with a static IP, and if your provider wants to, they can do the same damn thing with PPPoE. Yes its a little slower, because it requires processing, and yes you can't just plug it into your eth0 and have it working. There are several free pppoe clients that you can download and install for linux, Open/Free/NetBSD, and some of the will even compile for Solaris or BeOS. Sure it would be NICE to get a streight connection, but we want low cost high bandwidth, and if thats the way a provider can cut costs to give us high bandwidth, fine by me.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
I need a static IP for my 128 upstream... I run a nameserver!
For most situations, you don't NEED 5 hot IP addresses- not to mention that PPPoE client software would be needed for those 5 hot IP addresses, which is obnoxious.
All you need to service 5 or 10,000 machines is a NAT router configured to handle the number of machines in question. They sell units over the counter, no Linux/Unix knowlege required, that allow some 200+ users to be using one single IP and they do it well- for about $100US.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
but pppoe isn't that bad. I'll grant that the extra connect effort is annoying, but:
I just bought a NetGear router at CompUSA for $100 ($30 rebate after that) and haven't installed it yet, but they're pretty clear about the Linux support:
(From the PDF manual)
Browser-based management
Browser-based configuration allows you to easily configure your router from almost any type
of personal computer, such as Windows, Macintosh, or Linux. A user-friendly Setup Wizard is
provided and online help documentation is built into the browser-based Web Management
Interface.
Customer service won't be telling me off for using Linux anytime soon. And I don't blame you for crapping out JavaScript in this pop-up-under-over-around-and-whatnot infested world we live in these days.
Anyone care to start one? I imagine there are enough SBC customers to at least get a large enough petition that, while it might not affect anything, will make us feel better when we dump SBC :)
I have DHCP which is effectively static as long as I use the same computer to get an IP. If they switch me to PPPoE I'll be looking for a new provider. I've thought of Speakeasy, but I'm not too hot for Covad.. they have a rather bad reputation (I work at another ISP).
I'm sooooo glad I switched to speakeasy a few weeks ago.. PPPoE my ass..
I had Pacbell, then SBC, DSL for a little over two years. I watched the service get worse and worse and worse. Then, I decided I needed more upload bandwidth, and Pacbell could no longer offer me what I needed, so I switched in early July.. and I'm SOOO glad I did...
I don't see why not, the US controls the world. If it happens here first, it'll happen there next.
Probably has more to do with the fact they figured out that they can make a LOT more money with PPPOE than any other access method...
:)
Don't expect to see your setup times go down, either, cause that DSL system is still running through and ATM network
Check it! Money Making Hardware for SBC
WinPoet works with static IP addresses. It all depends on your ISP, and whether they associate your login with a static IP address (i.e. a good ISP) or just grab an IP from a pool (i.e. tightwad fucking loser money grubbing clueless ISP).
There are drivers for Macintosh, Linux, Solaris, and most of the windoze line. For *nux, I'd recommend Roaring Penguin which is just a simple protocol wrapper for existing PPP drivers. Instead of specifying a serial TTY port, use the pty option of pppd to pipe to a process. Simple. Discussion groups here. And IPSec shouldn't care about PPPoE, but I would suspect that typical (i.e. buggy as shit) windoze versions get confused by new device drivers.
PPPoE is pretty common all across Europe. This is because we have monopoly telcos (just like SBC, but with even less ethics) who refuse to allow wireline access to customers. So they aggregate all the DSL connections into Broadband Access Servers, and feed the resulting IP stream to the ISPs based on the CHAP logon. This allows a resemblance of competition, while still taking their cut of the profits. And it allows the telcos to promote their own services ahead of all competitors, and of course their provisioning software works only on their own ISPs systems, and all competitors have to constantly update and hopefully not lose too many customers because the provisioning protocol changes every Monday morning *cough*FraudTelecom*cough*BilgeCom*cough*. [rantmode=off]
If the article is correct about only allowing dynamically assigned IPs, they you are fuckt. Take the article with a grain of salt, because there are enough other factual errors I think the author pulled a bunch of facts out of his ass. If SBC behaves like telcos in Europe, they'll just pass the PPPoE stream to the ISP, and if the ISP wants to offer static IP addresses, no problem. Over here, some give static IPs for no extra cost, others charge as much as US$100 per month on top of the ISP fee.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
8 bytes in a 1500 byte packet = .5% increase. Yes when the protocol was written it was talked about being a 5 to 10% incrase but we now know that is not the case.
You can set the EnterNet client to not disconnect after an idele time, or if a disconnect occurs that it reconnect itself.
If your ISP is cutting you off in the middle of a download something is wrong. They have obviously not set up their systems properly.
Bob
http://www.carricksolutions.com/pppoe.htm - The largest PPPoE FAQ & How To database on the web.
I'm not exactly using PPPoE but PPTP, but I could switch to it it I wanted to, this would bethe same thing.
</Disclaimer>
> Because when using PPPoE, they can force all sorts of nonsense on you:
> 1) Changing IPs.
I have a static IP, thankyouverymuch, so what ? Hell, I even have a full subnet routed to my home network, so this isn't really a issue.
Memory fault -- brain fried
PPPoE always seemed to be a hack to me... basically it's just got too many layers... PPP over Ethernet over ATM. At least PPPoA (which is what is used exclusively over here) cuts out the middle layer... you get *some* of your bandwidth back.
I don't see what the argument has to do with dynamic IP though. The Static/Dynamic IP question is totally different - I have always-on static IP as part of my basic package... the underlying technology used to deliver that is irrelevant.
I have their advanced service with 5 static IPs, and it is well worth the extra cost. I can do all sorts of things that I couldn't on cable (either due to technology or policy) and it's been plenty zippy. At $65 it's a steal, especially when you are splitting it with 3 roommates! PPPoE is only for dynamic IP allocation, so hopefully they won't change my service. *knocks on wood*
Unless you're using the IP address as sole authentication --in which case you deserve to be spanked mercilessly-- having a dynamic IP is a non-issue.
Even with VPN, road warriors should have very restricted capabilities, since the chances that their (personal) workstations get compromised are much bigger, and can have pretty big consequences if they have unlimited access on the internal network. IT staff should focus on keeping these PC's secured in stead of nagging about limited IP access to the VPN server.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Roadrunner is looking more and more attractive. They're still DHCP...
I work for a local/regional ISP. We just rolled out our DSL product, and I have to say that it wouldn't have been possible without PPPoE. I think someone else has already said this, but it is *entirely* possible to have a static IP over a PPPoE connection. Also, as for the 8k/packet overhead, I have seen _no_ discernable slowdown. I use win2k, and I use RASPPPOE. I've had no problems with either of them. To address the always on issue, if I go into the properties of the connection I can set it to redail when disconnected.
..but I digress.
The reason that PPPoE has helped us in the engineering dept so much is that it makes it incredibly easy to keep track of customers. We roll out Cisco 827's to the CPE end, give them a PAP username/password, it is backhauled to a Cisco 7513 ATM blade, then onto our RADUIS server from there. With RADIUS, I can keep track of uptime, reconnects (helpful if a customer bitches that they're always being disconnected..usually a lie..) IP's (static & dynamic). Had I had to design a solution to this from the ground up that I can deploy in (time to customer site + plugging 3 cables into a router) it would have pushed deployment of this product back a few months and the market here would have already been devalued further than it is now. (Thanks a LOT, bellsouth.)
"I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them." -Isaac Asimov
Well, I was told that some people in industry consider sharing stupid but you should speak for yourself! Some of us want to make content available for non-comercial purposes and that the web was designed for that. The web was not made to be dominated by a few giant comercial suck sites, it was made at CERN to share information.
I'm already paying out the nose for the privalidge of publishing and people like you burn me up. I want badwith from a common carrier, not edited BS from some kind of publisher, thank you. Express your opinions here, on your own site or anywhere else people might listen but don't tell me what to do. Give me my static IP or do without my $45/month.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
With PPPoE, how would the DSL modem assign internal IPs to my machines? The DSL modem knows nothing about PPPoE. The software you run on the PC is what handles PPPoE. With DHCP, my DSL modem gets an address and uses NAT to allow me to assign internal IP addresses to the machines on my home network.
In other words, the switch would accomplish 2 things:
- I have to buy a PPPoE-capable router with NAT function
- I have additional overhead due to the PPPoE encapsulation eating away some of my bandwidth
So, by making such a switch, they would gain nothing from me and piss me off at the same time.Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
I have a Linksys router (Etherfast Cable/DSL) which makes it pretty seamless. When I first try to pull up a web page, it takes a few seconds as the router connects, and then after that it's fine. That's all there is to it.
I would absolutely despise PPPOE if I had to manually initiate a connection every time I wanted to do something, but having your router connect on demand for your entire home network mostly eliminates the pain.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
The point is that with PPPoE and DHCP you are at the mercy of the lease. My @Home IP changes every 6 months, mainly because @Home has purchased some new class A/B licenses and is reorganizing people (i'm now a 65.x address which plays heck with certain servers that only recognize @Home as being 24.x")
Six months isn't bad but there is nothing preventing them from setting a month/day/hour lease in the future if they decide they need to conserve IPs. It is much better to get a static IP contract and get it in writing (not on a homepage which can change overnight and leave you no proof that they ever offered it).
Do you really trust companies like SBC? I wouldn't recommend it.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Some of the Ameritech customers (owned by SBC) have PPPoATM. Are our machines to go too?
december 1999, i moved into a new apt and ordered a dsl connection from the people at pacific bell. their friendly 3rd party installer came in and told me that all new installations get pppoe, and asked me to point him at my win98 machine. i point him at my machine, running beos (no comments).
"is that some unix thing?"
"yeah, sure, whatever"
"we don't support unix. only windows98 and mac."
"okay, i'll do it myself."
the guy then proceeds to hand me a usb cable modem. usb on beos? yeah right. i made him go and come back with an ethernet one. he leaves me with a working dsl connection and no way to use it.
what to do? pull out the old machine from the closet, throw win98 on it. there were no stable linux pppoe drivers at the time. it works. kinda. after startup, there is a lovely 2 minute (!!!) interval where it's "dialing up" and the entire os is locked by the proprietary connection software (the protocol it uses is a nice mixture of closed, undocumented, and proprietary connection and authentication methods).
their client leaks memory (hey, there's nothing else running on that machine). the machine crashes on average once every hour (yes, yes, windows blah blah... it's not THAT unstable). whenever the machine crashes, there is a 10 minute delay until the ppp lease expires and i am allowed to acquire a new ip address. so, crash, reboot, wait 10 minutes, and i'm back online (every hour). the client doesn't work on nt4. why should it, why would anyone ever want to use that?
in the course of the next 3 days, i spent more that 16 hours on the phone (i'm not making these numbers up, folks) with the people at pacbell, attempting to convince them that they did not tell me that they were gonna shaft me with pppoe when i signed their contract and i had no basis for assuming that they were going to do so, so they should put me back on bridged ethernet. nothing doing.
plan b: win98 goes out, freebsd goes in. freebsd had a great pppoe implementation. very easy to configure. now all my network traffic travels through the pppoe driver to the tunnel driver (both in userland) to ethernet. freebsd seems to authenticate much faster and doesn't crash. so far so good.
but wait... how come i can't reach some machines. well, i can, but the connection either dies or is painfully slow (0.5kb/sec). took me a while to figure this one out (thanks to freebsd web docs for finally resolving this, btw). pacbell, in their infinite wisdom, had created what is known as a black-hole router. beos (and later, windows), was sending ethernet frames at 1500byte mtu). freebsd, being too smart for that, fragmented packets into appropriate mtus for pppoe (1490, is it?). now, remote sites reassemble these packets and go "hmm, mtu 1500. okay", and respond at that frame size. so the return packets won't fit over pppoe. pacbell's routers are gracious enough to take these packets and drop them on the floor without informing anyone involved that it had done so or why. the solution: fix it so that the frames sent out by all host machines are small enough to fit in the pppoe pipeline.
and when we worked out all the major bugs, what have we come to learn? that pppoe is SLOW. my 384/150 connection could not stream up an mp3 at 112kb/s, and the central office was ON MY BLOCK!!!
the moral of the story is: get a cablemodem. and may pacific bell, sbc, their employees, investors, families, friends, neighbors, and pets burn in hell.
now, the first time i ever checked the pop address that came with my service (having never used it or given it to anyone), i found 6 pieces of spam in there already waiting for me. but that's a different story.
I have installed quite a few dsl lines PPPoE and normal, all through Pacbell. PPPoE is used by ISPs to gain greater control over the services they offer their customers. The bad kind of control.
To paste some junk from the maker of the PPPoE client that SBC uses:
"It also allows for ISPs to resell the same line multiple times"
wtf?
"Instead of having the connection automatically occur when your computer boots (using DHCP to obtain an address), you will have to connect using Access Manager"
like a f-ing dialup.
"When you are finished, or when you've been idle for an undisclosed period of time, the client will (or might) disconnect you and you will need to reconnect to use the Internet again"
in the middle of a download and disconnected again.
"The definition of the protocol points to a 5-10% decrease in bandwidth"
I can promise you it is worse than that. 5% to 10% for an even spread of packet sizes but during a download, when packet sizes are at their largest, each one gets cut in half with additional header and footer information added.
I have never seen better than 65k/s on pacbell ISP using pppoe. ADSL using pac bell for the wire but a competeing isp is able to reach 170k/s from the same location
The process of changing ISPs was a year long horror because Pacbell is not reqired to sell the piece of copper running to your house to a third party since the contingencies of the telecommunications act of 1996 have expired.
Here is how to bypass that:
Without ever warning pacbell that you will change ISPs, have a second normal phoneline installed. Have an independent ISP set up DSL on that line through pacbell by normal means. Cancel Pacbell's DSL and have your old phone number translated to the new line. Cancel service on your old phoneline. Nasty. Expencive. Great non-pacbell DSL.
I think the pacbell execs must think PPPoE is saving them money somehow. So instead of dropping it and becoming competitive, They are playing like the monopoly they are.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
It'll give me an easy out to my Enhanced contract with them (/29, 5 usable) which otherwise is going to be active until some time in December.
If they actually pull this crap on people like me, it'll be trivial to break loose and go to a provider that doesn't play this kind of game.
FWIW, my SWB DSL was originally DHCP, and all was well. It would hop around if you didn't renew it regularly, but for the most part things were static. Then I ordered enhanced service, and some nitwit switched me to PPPOE as soon as I hung up the phone. For the next 2 weeks, I had to scramble around and get PPPOE working until they came through with the enhanced which of course requires no such thing.
Technically, I can handle it. But I won't accept it.
Even if people keep saying that PPPoE is the most horrible thing ever, it is not. I have Verizon DSL (which I got before it was verizon...good thing considering that I got to choose my own password.), I know, but its the only thing available here. Anyway, My connection is as advertized, running at good 62.5 Kb/s downstream...I know thats slow but that is they said it will be. It takes a total of three seconds to connect, and works great in linux, once i figured out what things to add to kernel. And I am pretty happy.
However I should probably mention that due to some idiocy or maldesign I seem to be able to initiate as many dial sessions as i need. All five computers dial at the same time with no problems., each one getting its own IP I should probably stay silent about this, but if they learn and turn this off, I will leave in a second. But until then I don't even have to bother with masq.
badness 10000
Oses? That's ridiculous.
I didn't learn my ABCes in school, I learned my ABC's. I didn't get all Bes on my report card, I got B's. I wasn't born in the 80es I was born in the 80's.
I'm sure it all depends on your opinion but I was taught that when using acronyms or literal characters (single letters or numbers) you have to be clear where the acronym ends and a possessive/plural appendage begins. Otherwise how do you know if i'm talking about the plural of OS or Open Software Engineering Systems?
Besides, "it's" isn't the possessive form of it so there's really no rational behind 's use anyway.
I stand by my choicES to use those 's's.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
SLIP.
Annyway my experience with SBC has been displeasent.
Pure static IP's are fine
DHCP is ok when administrated properly. On the justgettingand staying connected side of my ISP, I don't have to many complaints (other than it would be awsome if me doing research didn't also meen that uncle joe can't get in touch). On a slightly related topic, any news of Internet through powerlines?BR?
You're such a butthole.
I didn't know they had a league...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Uhm...PPPoE is not necessary for dynamic IP addresses. Many DSL providers provided dynamic addresses long before PPPoE.
Let me guess - your version is BEFSR41 V.1, right? I saw those boxes at CompUSA, but picked up a BEFSR41 V.2 instead so I could avoid an immediate update cycle. That's why I found it so incredible that Linksys customer support claimed that they don't support Linux for these boxes.
I rarely contact customer support precisely because my problems never fit their scripts, but when the modem appeared to be non-responsive (I could modify a few pages, but hitting "submit" did nothing) I had no choice but to call customer support.
Their incompetence made a five-minute problem ("turn on javascript") into a 3-hour ordeal as I followed their suggestion to load new firmware, something which required a TFTP client "enhanced" to support a password. Which meant it wasn't really TFTP, but I digress. I had to dig out and set up a Windows box to run the executable, etc.
And the modem was still non-responsive. For this much invested time, I could have set up a Linux box as the firewall (which I was trying to avoid, primarily due to the extra power consumption.) That wasted time is why I was so pissed at their indifference.
You're right that they might have just farmed out their support, but the bottom line is that they gave me bad advice, then tried to claim it was MY fault because I wasn't using an approved browser. That's a combination of indifference and arrogance that I refuse to support - I will not reward it with additional business.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
pppoe is SLOW. my 384/150 connection could not stream up an mp3 at 112kb/s
3
You can't blame that on PPPoE- it only adds like 8 bytes per packet in overhead. According to www.dslreports.com, you are lucky to get 80% of the maximum speed with all of the factors involved (just the IP and TCP packet headers take 13%)
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/faq/4.+Using+DSL#47
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
(-1, Karma Whore)
Hey CT - Can you make is so we can sort by User# and not have to read messages from anyone above 50,000?
To me the (SM) is analogous to some early automobile manufacturer selling autos with reins instead of a steering wheel/gas pedal combination and claiming to be "Preserving the Giddy-Up Experience."
Thanks. But, no thanks.
Nicely, though, PPPoE under Linux is seamless (to the user) once setup and part of the normal boot sequence. This leads me to consider an alternative (SM) for Linux: "Out with the old, in with the Gnu!".
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
If you buy a router with PPoE support, this is a total nonissue
BT have used PPPoE ever since they introduced ADSL, which i think has the largest user base of any isp in britain. I dont see what the problem is, its no harder to share over a network, which i think is what all the fuss is about. Plus it allows the use of MPPC compression, which speeds the downloading of compressible locations such as websites, text and postscript files even more. If you consider i can get 5-to-1 compression using a modem at 46.6kbs, at 576kbs (as is the standard BT OpenWorld plan, thats a total of 2,880 kbits/second, or 360 kilobytes/sec. I imagine the americans have it at even higher speed, so QUIT COMPLAINING DAMMIT.
Oops- meant to say that dynamic addresses are not ideal (since that seams to be one of the biggest complaints here about PPPoE).
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Can you get in touch with me please, NotoriousQ? smap_here@hotmail.com (Yeah, spam address :o). I'd be ever so grateful. TY.
--robz
BellSouth did this recently. As far as I know, it was because their network administrators couldn't figure out a way to prevent people from just setting static ip's on their bridged connection. You would order a DSL circuit, pay one month and then cancel service. They just took your ethernet's MAC out of their system. You just simply manually set your interface paramaeters, generate some ARP requests and you have free broadband. This was so stupid that I imagined hundreds of people doing it. Now, PPPoE is compulsory.
I'm running FreeBSD with a PPPoE connection and it works fine. I agree you need some software shit to make it work but it works and dial at boot time. For a network provider PPPoE must be cool because you're probably able to pack more user than lines you have, just like old modems.
A dynamic IP address may be less convenient for server applications, but most consumer DSL contracts prohibit those already anyway, and most ADSL lines make them impractical. The security arguments don't hold water: there is no reason why outgoing connections from a static IP address are any more secure than outgoing connections from a dynamic IP address. In fact, I'd say the opposite is true: a dynamic IP address gives you a greater degree of privacy and means that attackers have a harder time finding your system again. Furthermore, PPPoE would still allow you to use a static IP address if your ISP gives you one.
If you have Win2K, try RasPPPoE. It's a complete implementation of PPPoE that's very small and integrates really well onto the system. You connection looks like a normal RAS connection. It's way better than the crappy Access Manager of Sympatico that works only half of the time and that's not designed for w2k
Here's how DSL works. The phone company provides a line, a DSL modem, and some equipment in the central office. Using whatever protocol they want, they establish a connection between your modem and their equipment. It looks like an ethernet connection to your computer.
The phone company equipment in the central office is connected to your ISP, typically over the phone company's ATM network. The packets to and from your DSL modem are encapsulated and sent via ATM.
Note that is is all happening at a lower level than IP. Your IP address comes from your ISP. The phone company is not involved at the IP level, any more than they are when you use you regular modem over your phone line.
What SBC is doing is telling the ISP that they must use PPPoE, and they must not provide static IP addresses.
To put this in pre-DSL terms, this would be like the phone company telling your ISP that your ISP was not allowed to support SLIP...all dialup customers must be on PPP.
If you are using SBC as your ISP, this is fine. If, however, you are using some other ISP, and SBC is just providing the below-IP-level connection, it is none of their damn business what protocol you and the ISP agree to use over that connection, and it is certainly none of their business how your ISP allocates IP addresses.
I used to work tech support over at a DSL ISP (the one with the flying turtles) and, AIR, PPPoE was one of the suggested solutions to the biggest obstacle that DSL has: access.
You see, DSL can only extend to areas that use copper phone lines the whole way from your house to the local central office. Also, the phone company puts all sorts of funky devices on all its phone lines which either
a) let them fit more phone lines without running more wires
or
b) let them run phone signals out farther that they'd actually run without help.
And the kicker is, the phone companies have no idea what's on their lines.
Which means the DSL companies can only provide service to a very small area.
So, this solution will most likely allow DSL to spread to many areas it otherwise couldn't have, or could only extend to at pitiful 144 kbps speeds.
Mind you, it's been awhile. I could be wrong.
Any other DSL workers out there that can help me with my rusty memory?
Ian Fay (echidnaguy@cs.com), Geek, Gamer, Evil Overlord, DNRC Member
"Oh, what a goofy work is man."
As Mojo Nixon once said: "I ain't real fond of the phone company neither."
It looks like here's another reason to invest in 802.11 hardware for neighborhood Diablo2 games. Sure, the initial price is much higher than DSL, but at least it's a one time price. I doubt wireless has nearly the hidden costs that the phone and cable companies keep making up.
which means if u want a static, pacbell is driving you to their service..
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
"There's *nothing* you can do with PPPoE that I can't do with DHCP except authntication, and tht I can do with MAC addresses anyway, just like BellSouth does it." Think about what you just said, a little. There are costs associated with authenticating by MAC address. The ISP must process tech support calls from lusers when they want to use a different computer/NIC than the service was originally installed on. The MAC must be accurately recorded at install or order time. If you want customers to be able to self-install, saving the cost of rolling a truck out to the customer and all the associated hassle, this is a big problem as many customers will not get the MAC information right. PPPoE makes things a great deal simpler. Give the customer a PPPoE login, and you're done. No dependence on the user using the same NIC forever, easy for the end user to set up, etc. It can even make it very simple to get multiple computers running on a single connection, with no routers on the customer's side. Just allow multiple PPPoE sessions. THIS is why DSL ISPs go to PPPoE. It reduces tech support and install costs. No other reason.
I'm looking to move and went to qualify my new address's phone number on pacbell.net's website. To my surprise I also saw sdsl offerings there. See here for more info.
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
I have had 218 IP changes for my "always on" connection since June 2, 2001. The changes seem to be random except for a regular one every 64 hours - the rollover time I guess. most IP changes coincide with a minor outage (less than 2 seconds in most cases).
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
I have noticed many people complaining about having an 8 byte smaller mtu... This has no effect on internet bandwidth at all. This is just to your isp; they are committed to giving you the bandwidth they have advertised. It just means that you send more packets/second to your isp than your isp does to the internet.
My DSL provider is making the same switch. Right now they can't figure out how much bandwidth I use (they're not too bright I guess), so they have an "unlimited use" plan. Always on, flat rate. Love it. PPPOE makes it easy for them to know how much bandwidth I use. So I figure one of the reasons they're switching over is to make it easier for them to sneak in "pay by the megabyte" type plans. And on top of that, they're increasing the rates! Bastards. Plus, they have a complete monopoly over here, so I'm SOL.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
I've had bad experiences with trying to get PPPoE to work. It never worked. In fact, me and a local friend of mine tried hours trying to get Telocity's stupid router to work with the Linux box. But low and behold we never got it to work at all. My friend gave up and said, and I quote, "screw DSL, I'm getting cable." He did exactly that and ditched DSL. He is one of the many victims of the NorthPoint shutdown.
I've never had any problem with getting DHCP to work with cable. I have a cable connection and I didn't have any problem. It works seamlessly and it's fine by me. The mere thought that some idiot went to create a PPPoE protocol disgusts me. Rather, I loathe it. Everything was fine and dandy until we tried to get PPPoE up and running on his second DSL line (don't ask). I hate it. He hates it. Why should these DSL ISP force their customers to handle more problem than necessary? I tell ya, it's much more sane to either have some form of DHCP or simply use a static IP to save them, the customers, and the tech support people a lot of trouble of having to diagnose a PPPoE problem. I don't even care if it's a cool protocol. It's a protocol that I can do without. This is probably another reason why DSL is getting more complicated than cable. And to think that I wanted DSL originally. Yeesh!
I hate to think what would happen if the entire DSL network is running off of PPPoE. What then? My friend asks this that really makes you think. If DSL is supposed to be an "always-on" connection, why do we need PPPoE in the first place? PPPoE contradicts the concept of an always-on connection for DSL. What's next? The cable companies wanting some form of authentication over their network too?? For me, my only authentication is a mere MAC address. At least that makes more sense than having to tinker around with yet another username and password to remember.
~ Old Warriors Society
Off topic and all that, but I'll say it anyway - consider yourselves lucky you can actually chose between dsl/cable providers, here in Ireland we're stuck in the flaming dark ages. ISDN is about the fastest most can get at the moment, and then only at stupid prices. Flat-rate dial up? What? We're paying per-minute charges here! Sod our telco! RRGGH....
Perhaps my view is somewhat skewed. I've had limited experience with DSL, and I haven't read the RFCs. If anyone with more of a clue cares to correct my notions, I invite them to do so.
/29 or somesuch, have your ISP provision you one. If they won't, you again have a social problem, not a technological problem.
In my area, Ameritech offers two kinds of end-user equipment. One is a DSL "router" which uses DHCP, performs NAT and includes a 4-port 10mbps ethernet hub, from Efficient. The other is a DSL "modem" which talks PPPOE to the customer's PC, and is made with the Westell mark.
The router works just as one might expect. It has a reasonably complete command line interface, allowing a fair amount of creativity with forwarded ports and other simple router tricks. I do not know what is involved with its initial setup, as Ameritech does this themselves. I also do not know if it is possible to use it without any NAT at all. And I've got no idea what the transport layer back to the DSLAM consists of.
And I just don't care. It works well.
The DSL "modem" is just like any other modem. POTS into one jack, serial into another. Except in this case, that serial data is encapsulated into ethernet frames. So what?
It talks PPP, quite obviously. I'm using the Roaring Penguin software, with superb reliability. On 160/768 ADSL, I see a few percent of CPU usage on an absolutely horrible Cyrix MII firewall/NAT box under one of the 2.2 linux kernels. If such a meager amount of CPU time can't be spared (and, according to some of you, it's impossible), I guess you've already got your priorities in line and need a router of some form to offload the task. Nevermind that the cute perl script you whacked together to paste together fragments of porn from usenet, the cause of all the bandwidth usage, is already eating more CPU than that.
This latter arrangement also sports a dynamic IP address. Who cares? It was trivial to have the address updated automagically on one of the dynamic DNS services. It's also at the whim of the ISP - I'm sure that I could get a static IP, if I wanted one. It's certainly not an issue of the capabilities of PPP, but more of a social thing. I've had a static IP PPP dialup nailed up at home for years, without an ounce of trouble. If the connection drops, it reconnects. Things then continue where they left off, like it never happened.
PPP also supports routing entire networks, or subnetworks, or whatever. If you want a
Which is to say that PPPOE is just as capable as anything else DSL, given some sort of router. Is the need for a router at home something new to this world of supposed geeks? Stop whining and fire up ipchains, natd, ipfwadm, or a pretty box that says Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, ZyXEL, or some other such name.
People complain that PPPOE links aren't always-on. Of course they aren't. NOTHING in this world is.
Deal with it. The PPPOE-connected linux firewall does justfine handling such things as bringing the connection back in the event of it dropping. It takes seconds. It happens infrequently enough that I don't notice unless I'm looking at logs.
This stuff works over a pair of amazingly thin copper wires, strung crazily around the streets at the whim of city leaders, and operated by the telephone company. Nevermind that the design specification for these wires is 300-3,000Hz, and that DSL in any incarnation is an ugly fucking hack to begin with. It's amazing it works at all. And you want perfection?
This change is so fucking insubstantial to the way things work in practise that it's absolutely laughable to see so many people upset about it. When's the last time you had a network problem, and found PPP (over -any- medium) to be at fault?
Get a life. Stop whining. Even if PPPOE -does- incur a real performance hit, you'll never notice. And if you do notice, and still care, and still feel like whining about insignificant things, find something else. Vote with your wallet. Show those money-grubbing assholes as SBC just how you want to be treated.
You can have your T1 (and pay for it, too).
Kid-proof tablet..
Covad has been great for me. I'd sooner eat hay than use "Qwest". I pay for what I want and I get it. Competition is the only real way to keep these baby bells at bay. Unfortunately, people don't really go out of their way for them.
Try RAS PPPoE (search for it on google, I'm too lazy to post the URL). It's the PPPoE protocol and nothing more, no bogus software. Where I live in Canada they tried forcing us to use their software which was designed around the Enternet PPPoE dialer, but it was just a 2meg advertisement with freakin' memory leak in it, plus it usualy lost the connection every 6 hours or so. RAS PPPoE does a much better job and only 100k of resources, no ads or popup crap. Since I switched to RAS PPPoE I haven't had a single complaint about my dsl connection.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
I don't know where all this nonsense about not being able to have a static IP if you're connecting via PPPoE is coming from. ISPs have been serving static IPs over PPP for years. If your ISP only knows how to serve static IPs over DHCP, well, that sucks -- but it's the ISP's fault. Find yourself an ISP that's ever heard of RADIUS before, and you won't have that problem.
Whoa! Hemos fuckin' Soprano! Chill out!
~~~
No one should be forced to use "Internet Connection Sharing". Build a router with OpenBSD or Linux, silly.
The only PPPoE setup I had anything to do with didn't down the link unless the other end failed to return the link state pings. So the connection was up unless your end gets turned off for a while (like say a laptop being suspended for 10 minutes).
I don't think so, and nobody mentioned any such way during PPPoE's working group stage, or at the IETF before it became a RFC. Nobody has drafted a working document since either.
Minimal effort, some hosts that don't want to be on the global internet, some that do. Bonus points if you can get more then one DHCP-DSL connection to work at once.
Would you like to do it now? Your going to have to add another machine in most cases to filter out the DHCP replies you don't want, and to route between the two sets of IP addresses (outside and inside), or assume you can already do that (hosts that support ethernet IP aliases can, many hosts can't -- some like OSX should, but won't).
Now, you can argue that PPPoE solves problems that don't need to be solved, but you sure can't argue that DHCP solves those problems. PPPoE was written (at least in part) by three very smart and very lazy people. They would have done the simpler task of nothing at all if DHCP would have worked.
You are quite wrong. It was tested in the lab down the hall from my office.
The DSL "modems" in question (they either had copper in their name, or rocket, or both) forwarded all PPPoE negotiation packets to the far end, and any PPPoE packets that were for a session established through them. However I guess some DSL "modems" could forward all packets (well, no more then 10% of them with a 1Mbit DSL pipe and a 10Mbit ethernet), or all PPPoE ethertypes regardless of session ID, which probably violates the RFC. I do know for sure that at least one gets it right.
No Phantasy Star Online support when using PPPoE either. Sounds like it could potentially interfere with their billing ideas. And with Final Fantasy XI just around the corner using a nearly identical billing scheme...the whole PPPoE idea seems very console UNfriendly. KZ
People getting dsl from pacbell won't be forced to move to pppoe, only those who get service from others (concentric, etc) who provide dsl service using pacbell's network.
Of course, that really sucks, and all the arguments still apply. However, I don't really care since I get dsl directly from pacbell.
This arrangement was supposed to foster competition, and it did. Despite the fact that few of the DSL ISPs are making money, allowing DSL competition forced telcos to offer DSL whether they wanted to or not. Without this, we'd all be waiting for the installation of a future generation of CO switches with DSL built into every line card. The present setup is hokey and only sort of works, but it forced deployment.
There's always the interesting question of where the backhauled portion of the connection actually goes into the Internet. If your ISP is far away, your packets may be transported a long distance before they hit the backbone. I'm amused to see 100ms ping times between me and AltaVista.com, because my DSL line is physically terminated in the central office next door to AltaVista's data center. Yahoo is only 20ms away.
Not that anyone will ever read this, but...
I have PPPoE at home and have never had any problems with it. I am running a masquerading firewall under RH 7.1, which is running roaring penguin PPPoE. ADSL connects on bootup, and has stayed connected for up to 60 days at a stretch. Every five minutes, a cron job runs and checks to see if the connection is up. If it is not, it reconnects, and if it receives a different IP, it notifies my DNS server, which updates the entry. It does help that I run my own DNS on a server that's on a DS3, but...
I run a small web server through this connection and have never had any problems with it, nor have I had any problems with any services including VPN and SWAN connections. It's been pretty painless once I got the scripts written. Contrary to what I've heard people saying here, my ping times are consistently around 10-18 ms. Sometimes slower at peak useage times, but generally less than 25ms, even then.
My present service is through a Bellsouth reseller called MPINet in central Florida, who in turn is part of Duro Communications. I also use their business DSL for one of our offices, which has a static IP and is running POATM, I think. The performance is pretty similar to my home DSL. The real deal, though is Directv's dsl service, static IP, free router and no installation charge for $49.95/month. I'm gonna switch to them as soon as my contract expires with MPINet.
Just wanted to say thanks to some of the informed discussion here. We moved at the beginning of July and I am still (!!) fighting the b*stards to get my DSL service properly working. Some of the info posted here will help me in my battle.
I live in Dallas BTW, home to SWBell. 'nuff said about that.
Oh yeah, I will vote with my feet as do many others are. Haven't you notice the IT slowdown? When people like me leave the net to people like you there will be nothing left but suck, but I don't think that will happen. There are ways around the last mile that will leave greedy loosers in well deserved debt.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I know I'm late to the post, and very few people are going to read this. That being said, Consider what SBC seems to be doing: (Disclaimer - We run an ISP, but I have no inside information on SBC.)
SBC is in the process of putting in "Media-access-gateways" that you will be connecting to via your DSL modem. You will log into the gateway with your user-name and password. Once logged in, a proxy-radius request will be sent to the ISP's radius server. Based on the response, a permit/deny result will be sent back to the customer. If it is a permit, and the ISP provides their own bandwidth, an ATM SVC will be built back to the ISP's network, and the node registered. At that point you're connected until you reboot.
Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? Consider this: Your ISP seems to be slow, or you just want to try something different. By just changing the username/password, you can connect to any ISP you want. With the downturn of the ISP business, I can see SBC not wanting to get stuck with ISP losses, so I expect them to push the subscriber to pay for their own DSL line, and then pay the ISP for just a "connection" charge.
Just my ideas of where I seem the market going...