If I wanted to deliver my customer a single IP address that they could plug into one computer, a router, etc. (kinda like a cable or DSL connection), would assign them the IP via PPPoE and then bridge their PPPoE interface to their eth0? Now that I think about it more, I’d still have to assign it to the end device some how. Their IP would be assigned to the PPPoE\eth0, not to their PC.
Can I use PPPoE to assign an address to a device that’s not the CPE and doesn’t require the user to setup PPPoE on their box?
You can have the CPE device act as the PPPoE client that establishes the connection and have it bridge the WAN and LAN interfaces, thus allowing you to use DHCP on the LAN side client device to obtain an IP address.
PPP(oE) does not necessarily “hand out” IP addresses, that’s done via your DHCP server. Remember PPPoE is a layer 2 protocol.
The CPE device has to support bridging which most do.. I know SBC DSL does this with their Netopia DSL routers. Are you using MT as a CPE?
also…
Now that I think about it more, I’d still have to assign it to the end device some how. Their IP would be assigned to the PPPoE\eth0, not to their PC.
If you bridge it’s a layer 2 device, it does not need a publicly routeable IP address (Layer 3) so if you bridged the to interfaces and just had the CPE intiate the PPPoE connection, then your client on the other end of the bridge could either set the IP address dynamically (if you’re using DHCP) or staticly and maintain a connection.