From owner-freebsd-net Tue Aug 3 6:21:51 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from storm.FreeBSD.org.uk (storm.freebsd.org.uk [194.242.128.198]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6D864152B6 for ; Tue, 3 Aug 1999 06:21:33 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from brian@Awfulhak.org) Received: from keep.lan.Awfulhak.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by storm.FreeBSD.org.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA41650; Tue, 3 Aug 1999 14:20:46 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from brian@Awfulhak.org) Received: from keep.lan.Awfulhak.org (brian@localhost.lan.Awfulhak.org [127.0.0.1]) by keep.lan.Awfulhak.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA07776; Tue, 3 Aug 1999 14:21:54 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from brian@keep.lan.Awfulhak.org) Message-Id: <199908031321.OAA07776@keep.lan.Awfulhak.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: jonathan michaels Cc: Brian Somers , Brian Somers , Robert Watson , freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: "Invitation to participate in PPPoE Trial" (fwd) In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 03 Aug 1999 22:53:25 +1000." <19990803225325.E10638@caamora.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 03 Aug 1999 14:21:54 +0100 From: Brian Somers Sender: owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org jon@caamora.com.au said: > i realise that all things bright and shiney are seen as must haves, > but could you (briefly and not so technically) explain to me and the > others who may also be wondering what real advantage PPPoE would > offer to endusers. > > or, please point to a reading list, bibliography, rfc, etc etc. Well, the reading matter's in rfc2516. The basic idea is for ISPs that want to provide ethernet based media to individual subscribers that have no requirement to talk directly to each other - ie, things like ADSL I believe. The reason PPPoE is used is to supply the session-control and authentication side of things. The ISP may have several gateway machines on the LAN, and each subscriber will broadcast a request to connect to a gateway. When they're accepted a ppp connection results using the ethernet as a transport. Personally, I prefer the idea of having something like PPPoUDP instead. This would provide all the same facilities, be very easy to implement (user-ppp can do it already!) and would be routable, all for a very small encapsulation overhead. -- Brian Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour ! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message