PPPoE / PPPoA / IPoE

I did a small online research on different methods of providing broad band services over ADSL, well … mainly it can be PPPoE , PPPoA or IPoE (actually because one customer asked me this question ) . PPPoE is the most popular and IPoE is the most modern but due to some security lacks and technology immaturity not used in large scale .

PPPoE - the PPPoE client can be in the PC or in the modem , the diagram below is the case when PPPoE client is built in the modem. The user name and password will be set in the modem. For IP DSLAM there is nothing much to do about the PPPoE pkts than pass-through. According to TR-101 the DSLAM should add a tag to identify the ADSL port from which the PPPoE session is initiated.

for testing purposes , you can use a Linux PC and run RP-PPPoE server on Linux(I used FC4) or if you LOVE windows you can use http://www.raspppoe.com/ RASPPPoE protocol , this works both as server and the client .

PPPoA - PPPoA client can be the modem or an ATM network card plugged in a PIC slot of the PC , anyway it seems like using PPPoA is not very popular now due to the popularity in Ethernet technology , anyway DSLAMs are suppose to be able to detect what type of connection the modem is requesting automatically , therefore if u set PPPoA in your modem (though the originally it was set to PPPoE ) there is a good possibility that ISP's DSLAM will automatically detect this and allow ur modem to establish a link.

Pure PPPoA environment , when the ISP's network infrastructure is ATM ,

PPPoA in PPPoE environment , the IP DSLAM will convert the PPPoA in to PPPoE ,

IPoE - was the easiest to set up and configure , I used IEEE 802.1x for authentication and DHCP with relay agent and option 82 .