[techtalk] PPPoE troubles

[Darren Osadchuk]

>>I'm trying to get Linux to talk to my ADSL service. After quite a few
>>unsuccessful attempts with DHCP, I did a bit more poking around, and it
>>turns out that PPPoE is the way to go. 
>
>Ok, I must ask this, as I also have ADSL: Why do you have to use PPPoE? I
use 
>straight ethernet connection and it works wonderfully for three comptuers.
Now 
>unless the ISP has the DSL routers set to PPP bridging mode (don't know why 
>they would do that, tho) there shouldn't be a need for this.

To be honest with you, I don't know why this is what I have to use to get
it to work. This seems to be the way they want it, for whatever reason -- I
make this assumption based on the fact that the Windows software they
provide is also PPPoE (it's called WinPoet:
http://www.ivasion.com/winpoet/winpoet_overview.htm). I had tried using
DHCP, and from what people in the know were telling me, I had it set up
properly, but it just wouldn't work. Some further poking around turned up a
Sympatico users support site that is largely Ontario-centred* but still
quite helpful. This is operated by Sympatico users, which doesn't support
Linux and is therefore rather unhelpful. But this also means that there are
a lot of Linux users there, and everything written about getting Sympatico
ADSL to work with Linux talks about PPPoE. All of which is a very
long-winded way of saying that I have no clue what the technical reasons
for this may be. I'm just glad to have found something that should work!

*Sympatico is an almost-national ISP where the provincial presence is a
division of the phone company. The only province in which they have no
presence is Saskatchewan (notably -- for people like me who do public
policy stuff -- SaskTel is the only phone company in Canada that does not
belong to the Stentor alliance of Telcos, a national lobby group. I have no
idea what this means for the availability of ADSL in SK). So even though
the material on the support site is Ontario-centred, it's still
sufficiently similar that I can make it work in Manitoba.

Hope this answers your question :)
______________________________________________________________________________
osadchuk at pangea.ca                             http://www.pangea.ca/~osadchuk/

Richard was thunderstruck: it had been like watching Emma Peel, Bruce Lee, and
a particularly vicious tornado, all rolled into one and sprinkled with a
generous helping of a mongoose killing a king cobra. That was how she moved.
That was how she fought.

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