PPPoE -> DHCP : how to switch ???

Chuck Vose vosechu at gmail.com
Tue Feb 1 08:08:08 UTC 2005


Whew, quite the thread! 

Hopefully this will help you understand PPPoE and why you shouldn't
have to touch it (if you are using it with cable which only happens in
Brazil apparently). With DSL what you usually have is a very similar
setup but because DSL modems often come with routers in them we've
lost track of the concepts.

In any broadband connection you usually have a modem that hooks into a
router which hooks into your computer or a switch (and then to your
computers). In the case of cable we use cable modems which communicate
over just plain old TCP/IP, in the case of a DSL modem we put a
point-to-point connection on top of TCP/IP so that the DSL boys can
track who's coming onto the network, when, etc.

Anyways, the point is that DSL modems require an extra step. In order
to make this a little easier people started making routers that could
do this extra step so you don't have to have special software for your
computer. All was well and good until people started putting the
router on the modem and everybody spent too much money and got
confused :)

So, either way, ideally, you shouldn't have to deal with PPPoE unless
you don't have a router or modem that figures this all out for you.

On to the smtp stuff, the best I can suggest is to call the broadband
provider and find out what the outgoing email server's dns name is.
The outgoing and incoming servers are usually different where incoming
can stay the same over any network, the outgoing has to live on the
network (ok it doesn't but most people tell the outgoing smtp servers
not to allow any emails out except from the internal network).

In my case my incoming server is pop.gmail.com and my outgoing is
smtp.advancedstream.com; completely different networks but everything
works. Yay!

I hope this helps you understand what's going on with your setup, if
nothing it will hopefully get you started on disabling pppoe. Have you
checked for any documents on this matter? My guess is that if you find
a pppoe howto you can follow the steps backwards and figure out things
:)

As always, if it doesn't help let me know and I'll try to continue :)
-Chuck




More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list