Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 22:06:58 -0500 From: "Gary T. Corcoran" <gcorcoran@lucent.com> To: "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM> Cc: freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: More on PPPoE & ADSL (Telstra Bigpond) Message-ID: <39FF88D2.7ED5A9AB@lucent.com> References: <F50iFEW6sStwNeKjUbE00001146@hotmail.com> <39F8C29F.D785C588@lucent.com> <39F9210E.B728D4F8@elischer.org> <39F9B679.CA563B9E@lucent.com> <39F9E669.FB8D77D2@elischer.org> <39F9F1FB.F00E686F@lucent.com> <39F9FFAD.2992767D@elischer.org> <39FA0056.8CB7D452@elischer.org> <39FA081C.3E56D791@lucent.com> <200010280124.e9S1O8G52999@whizzo.transsys.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> I previously wrote: > > Personally (my opinion only), I dislike PPPoE. It adds a full THIRTY (30) > > bytes of overhead to every packet you send! And for a (real) DSL link, > > it's not needed. That is, you really just want to send PPP over ATM > > (DSL packets get formatted as ATM cells, if you didn't know). [good explanations by Louis for why PPPoE was needed deleted] Hi Louis, I didn't realize you were on this email list... <smile> Sorry if I gave the wrong impression in my previous email. I didn't mean to imply that PPPoE was "bad" in and of itself, nor that it was not needed. For the reasons you detailed in your response, it is needed. I guess what I really meant was that I just wish it wasn't _needed_ in the first place! :-) It just seems a little ironic that this protocol, invented to make things simpler for end-users to hook up external boxes, has to be implemented even for *internal* DSL adapters because some of the head-end equipment is using PPPoE. So we end up with PPP over Ethernet over ATM over DSL. That's a lot of bit twiddling to do! But, of course, it works. And things would be so much simpler if we didn't have to support _seven_ protocol flavors for DSL (PPPoE being one of them). If there were just one "standard", we wouldn't need so many options and so much protocol (wrapping) code in our drivers. And one could just use a different ATM virtual channel, i.e. VPI/VCI pair, to talk to multiple destinations (separate networks) at the same time. If fact, because there are some installations that do exactly that, it's yet another feature I put in our driver awhile back - maybe that's eight flavors... :) But I guess I shouldn't really complain: having all this complexity, and all these protocol flavors, has kept me employed and made me a valuable member of our development team... :-) ;-) Gary To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?39FF88D2.7ED5A9AB>