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0 pointsbjw41y ago0 comments

PPPoE is still very common in the UK, even over fibre. I think it’s something to do with allowing multiple providers on the same infra.

The encapsulation requires a lot of CPU power, and on non specialised x86 hardware you end up needing a highly clocked CPU to get gigabit speeds.

OpenWRT is Linux based so has a multithreaded implementation.

My Flint 2 router has some sort of hardware acceleration so hammering a gigabit line shows <1% CPU, leaving lots of overhead for things like Docker.

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topspin1y ago

Thanks for the useful explanation.

Despite another comment claiming this was "common" in the US, I've been on a number of ISPs in the US and never seen PPPoE used at all. Had no idea this was still going on. On fiber even!

Seems like I'd get some kind of efficient PPPoE box and put that between the ISP and whatever software router/firewall (PfSense, et al.) or "non specialized" hardware router. I suppose fragmentation could be avoided by limiting packet size a little to make room for the 8 byte PPPoE bits.

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