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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."

3 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. It doesn't matter to me... by RasputinAXP · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've always had PPPoE service.

    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.

  2. Re:Not good. by jmauro · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. Dirty tricks... by dex22 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.