[svlug] Pac Bell DSL and PPPoE

[William Black]

PPPoE has the following advantages for ISPs:

1.  IPs are dynamically allocated (no more having to
manage static IPs).
2.  IPs are allocated on demand.  More folks can thus
be squished into a single class C without having to
resort to NAT/IPMasq/whatever.
3.  Dynamic IPs and automatic disconnects mean fewer
folks running servers.
4.  If done correctly, you should be able to reduce
the number of things you need to configure.  PPP
should set IP, gateway, DNS, etc with a single
login/password.  The ISP can change those for these
people at will, without having to notify anyone.

PPPoE has the following advantages for users:

1.  Because your connection is on-demand and dynamic,
your system should be somewhat more secure (i.e.
you're a moving target).  If you have kids, this also
means that you can leave your system up without fear
of having them exposed to the untamed Internet (just
don't tell them the PPPoE password).

In other words, there are some advantages for IP and
client setting management, but the downsides are
pretty extreme if you're anything but a casual user. 
This also means that those of us that give firewall
holes in corporate networks for users on static IPs
won't be able to do that anymore.  My company has had
to resort to VPN in these cases.  That means one login
for PacBell, one for the VPN, and another for the app
(Citrix ICA, e.g.).  With idle timeouts, that means
lots of logins/logouts over the course of a day (and
casual users don't like to do that--sysadmins do that
anyway, so who cares?).  That's why we're not setting
up our users with PacBell anymore.

--bj

--- Mo DeJong <mdejong at cygnus.com> wrote:
> On 10 Aug 2000, Christopher Lee wrote:
> 
> > >>>>> "kevin" == kevin  <kevin at ank.com> writes:
> 
> > Ah yes, why is this ethernet conenction different
> from all other ethernet
> > connections?  
> > 
> > My impression is that PPP over ethernet (PPPoE) is
> a recent protocol
> > designed to make ISP's lives easier and everyone
> else's life harder.
> 
> As far as I can tell, the only thing it does is
> force you to log
> in with a username and password. One thing this
> could
> be useful for is kicking you off the service without
> having
> to go out and disconnect the wire. It can also stop
> you
> from connecting two machines to the network, since
> you
> can only log in once, a problem easily solved with a
> firewall.
> 
> Mo DeJong
> Red Hat Inc
> 
> _______________________________________________
> svlug mailing list
> svlug at lists.svlug.org
> http://lists.svlug.org/mailman/listinfo/svlug


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Kick off your party with Yahoo! Invites.
http://invites.yahoo.com/