Re: [LUNI] Ameritech SpeedPath aDSL

From: trent (trent@trentland.com)
Date: Thu Mar 29 2001 - 19:29:38 CST

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    Martin Maney wrote:
    >
    > On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:12:24PM -0800, trent wrote:
    > > I have absolutley no idea. From what I've read it appears as a
    > > connection icon in windows- similar to dial-up networking. By default
    > > it disconnects after a certain period of time, and it appears to be a
    > > legacy protocol. That's about all I know, until this afternoon, that
    > > is. I do have a lot of questions, though. Why authenticate at all?
    > > Why not use MAC addy? Why disconnect? Who's on top, SBC or Ameritech?
    >
    > One advantage to PPPoE over the very traditional router-based approach that
    > Telocity uses (for example) is conservation of IP addresses. The way
    > Telocity handles it they use FIVE addresses (1) to provide a single end-user
    > machine's connection. With PPP you can cut that down to 2 IP addresses, and
    > I'm not certain that the upstream address actually has to be unique - but
    > those can come from a non-routable address block if you need to reduce the
    > IP address usage.
    >
    > The disconnection business is undoubetly viewed as an advantage of using
    > PPPoE by Ameritech: they don't WANT customers nailing the line up, if only
    > because that makes it practical to run servers, and they don't want
    > cusotmers who want to do that. Given PPPoE, requiring authentication is
    > probably just simpler, esepcially since that lets them co-opt the existing
    > Windows dial-up stuff to manage the connection. And, finally, modeling it
    > on dial up probably lets them oversell the IP address space, further
    > reducing the number of public IP addresses they need to use per customer.
    >
    > Of course there drawbacks to all these things, as there would be to using
    > the MAC address for authentication (some cable systems have done that; it
    > causes its own annoyances).
    >
    > (1) 4 in the subnet (2 usuable, 1 of those is the "modem's" NIC) plus the Ip
    > address the upstream side of the "modem" uses. I suppose you could count a
    > fractional address for the per-user share of the level up, but that's
    > probably not very different than what everyone else does. I guess.

    A special thanks to all who helped out. The configuration could not
    have gone any smoother.

    I compiled/configured Roaring Penguin PPPoE, set up PMFirewall and it
    fired up the first time. I bit my tongue when I hit 'adsl-start' not
    knowing what to expect- "Connected" was the answer. I was shocked (but
    of course I didn't show it ;). I turned on PMFirewall (IPMasq) and that
    was it- his girfriend and his secretary were gambling and surfing porn
    sites immediately.

    It never occured to me that it would show up as (DUH!) a ppp connection
    rather that an eth, but it makes perfect sense in retrospect. Fear not
    Ameritech DSL & PPPoE- if you can get it installed.

    Tomorrow I'm going to write a little perl script so he can
    start/stop/status his connection from his browser and that will be it.

    Thanks all.

    trent
    -=-
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