Subject: Re: [net-next-2.6 PATCH] net: fast consecutive name allocation

From: Stephen Hemminger <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:22:24 -0800

On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:06:04 +1030
Mark Smith <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The fundamental purpose of PPPoE is nothing to do with any scaling or
> architecture, it is purely to make a more modern shared networking
> technology like Ethernet look like high speed dial up. This has occurred
> mainly because when broadband came along it allowed ISPs to introduce
> it quickly, without having to also upgrade their dial up oriented
> backend systems i.e. customer authentication/accounting and customer
> support systems. It wasn't ideal then and it isn't ideal now. PPPoE adds
> an overhead of 8 bytes per packet, yet the only thing it is doing is
> changing ethernet from multipoint to point-to-point so PPP can run
> over it and providing ISPs with an ability to identify the subscriber.
> There are other methods to solve customer identity problem without the
> PPPoE overheads. Moving to them however can be a long drawn out process
> because it also means changes to customer's CPE settings, or running
> the old and new methods in parallel for the foreseeable future.

Carriers still haven't figured out that circuit switched networks don't
scale. They just can't learn the lesson of the Internet.