[CDBUG-talk] PPPoA ... ?

[Jonathan Franks]

Hi all,

I've been thinking of reconfiguring my dsl connection lately and something
in the docs has me a bit confused.

Current setup is :

DSL MODEM -> OpenBSD FW (3.7) -> Linksys WRT54G -> switch

Which leaves me with a wholly unnecessary network segment.

What I want is:

DSL MODEM (as bridge only) -> OpenBSD FW (running ppp and pppoe) -> switch
(with my Linksys Wireless router just acting as an AP off the switch)

Taking the WRT54G out of the picture for non wireless clients, and bridging
the modem.



The thing that I'm hesitating on is the pppoe setup on the FW. For the most
part it seems pretty straight forward between the FAQ and the relevant man
pages... but here's the thing:

My DSL provider uses PPPoA. In the FAQ I see this:

The main software interface to PPPoE/PPPoA on OpenBSD is
pppoe(8)<http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=pppoe&sektion=8>,
which is a userland implementation (in much the same way that we described
ppp(8) <http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=ppp&sektion=8>, above).
A kernel PPPoE implementation,
pppoe(4)<http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=pppoe&sektion=4>,
has been incorporated into OpenBSD.

which seems to indicate that pppoe will work with either PPPoE or PPPoA. The
man pages make no reference to PPPoA at all, however. My searches of the
archives and Google have turned up some rather old posts, one suggesting
that special hardware is required for PPPoA, and another that _appears_ to
indicate that it isn't.

So..... can anyone shed some light here? I could just try it out, but I'd
rather be a bit more confident before I do.

The modem also offers a "half-bridge" mode which theoretically authenticates
to the ISP and then passes the IP back to the router. Assuming that special
HW is required, could this be used instead?


Anyhow thanks for any insight....


-Jonathan
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