I’ve been using PPPoE for most of this year for authentication of fixed wireless clients. I have one MT PPPoE Access Concentrator (AC) on my network and several other MT routers. So that clients can all authenticate against the AC I’ve set up EoIP tunnels between the MT router near some users (local router) and the AC, thus the PPPoE tunnel is terminated on the AC at is not stopped at the segment the user is in.
This solution has been great, allowing users to have a public IP address via the PPPoE connection and all but the AC router having private IP addresses. This has maximised the number of spare public IP addresses I have and simplified the creation of PPP secrets (I’ve not got into the whole RADIUS thing yet)
Recently I upgraded my Internet pipe from 0.5Mbps to 1Mbps and tried to supply all of this speed to a couple of PPPoE Clients, the speed was worse than with 0.5Mbps. I first thought the wireless backhaul might not be upto it but using bandwidth test I can get >3.5Mbps one way and about 1Mbps both, if I use normal routing with masquerade to the Internet I get the full bandwidth.
PPPoE directly connected to the AC is fine too as to is the same routing setup tested on my wired 100Mbps LAN, although I notice a 50% reduction in network throughput speed.
I tried setting up the local router (the one near the users) with a PPPoE AC and then normal routing to the Internet gateway, this too worked well.
My AC router is a Pentium 2 450Mhz 128Mb RAM netgear MA311 wireless NIC the Local routers are Pentium Pro 200 72Mb RAM. The wireless network is 2 hops with a 2-radio repeater in the middle (802.11b) & <0.5% packet loss.
So why is the EoIP killing the PPPoE performance? is the only option to route the public addresses closer to the users then use PPPoE just in that segment? any comment or help is most welcome!
This is not possible on my network config as only the AC router has a wireless NIC the rest are using Osbridges and Dlink 900AP+ units.
I’m not sure that WDS would help as this would just create one large segment, somthing I’m trying to avoid hence the use of routers to split the segments up… although I’ve suspected that what I’ve beed doing is bridging them back together with the EoIP.
The MTU may just be it! I will have to do some tests but it was set to 1492 (I think that is what MT RouterOS makes it when you create a PPPoE Server)
As for cards, the AC has an intel PRO/100 (built into the Compaq SFF) and Netgear MA311 (Prism 2.5) but also tried going though one of the 4 ports on the DLink 580TX (Sundance) PCI card using a wireless bridge with the same poor results.
Is MT Planning on putting PPPoE relay into RouterOS, I’ve googled but I’m finding it hard to understand exactly what it is can you explain?
poor EoIP thoughput or all trafic? as I’m finding the EoIP / PPPoE is not so good as raw routing without the vpn.
I changed the PPPoE server MTU to 1480 on the AC and the PPPoE is better thanks but still not great, when testing on the wireless LAN I’m getting 500 - 1500 Kbps on the 100Mbps switched wired LAN I’m getting 28Mbps (using PPPoE etc) This is with the same hardware although the NICs are different on the remote router.
Without PPPoE / EoIP I get about 3 Mbps. anymore thoughts?
thanks but still not great, when testing on the wireless LAN I’m getting 500 - 1500 Kbps on the 100Mbps switched wired LAN I’m getting 28Mbps (using PPPoE etc) This is with the same hardware although the NICs are different on the remote router.