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  • Hacker News
  • I mean at this point just ditch the Unifi? You have a much more capable gateway in play now that needs to have equal to greater throughput than the one you are bridging for.
    by simonjgreen
  • No, the half-bridge is less capable for various functions, but happens to have hardware PPPoE offload which makes it faster for this specific function but not for others
    by p_l
  • The UCG Fiber numbers make the case: this is a SoC acceleration gap, not a PPPoE overhead problem. Half-bridge is a workaround for hardware Ubiquiti shipped.
    by sage981
  • I always suspected this was possible but having it demonstrated is excellent. I would assume this would be of most benefit on an OpenWRT box which _does_ support hardware offload!
    by cr3ative
  • I guess what they did works but it makes some of valid ip addresses unavailable.
    by mono442
  • Was thinking along the same lines; why do we hardcode a /24? Is that reality in ISP last mile networks?!
    by ksk23
  • > thanks to their buggy ARP implementation, we additionally need to add static ARP entries on OpenWrt

    Is there any more information about this? I'm curious what behavior they exhibit / what issues there are

    by Chihuahua0633
  • Oh thanks. My local ISP insists on pppoe even for business lines.

    I like the unifi APs but then using their gateways is a no-no.

    by nottorp
  • In my specific situation I was able to use this WAS-110 to get full speed PPPoE from my fiber provider (Bell).

    https://pon.wiki/guides/masquerade-as-the-bce-inc-giga-hub-2...

    by davidhariri
  • Sure, it bypasses the supplied hardware but does not solve PPPoE limitations on UniFi.

    I use the same WAS-110 on Bell.

    by asniper
  • As I noted in my other comment, AT&T Fiber doesn't actually using PPPoE, but anyway, glad to see you linked pon.wiki here. I am running XGSPON ONU stick (ONU on SFP) with the community firmware for my AT&T Fiber connection, getting native 5gbit throughput without the AT&T device in the path. pon.wiki is an amazing resource.
    by tristor
  • I miss when this kind of content would've just been two paragraphs and a config snippet.

    (also, this isn't a "Show HN")

    by q3k
  • A lot of people dunk on PPPoE, but it does have one redeeming feature: failover is a lot easier and faster compared to IPoE. With IPoE you often rely on vendor-proprietary mechanisms. The closest thing to a common standard is packet-triggered sessions. Normally, BNG's set up sessions using DHCP but you can rig it to do a RADIUS request for a non-DHCP packet without a known session. In this case, it will send the source IP as the radius username, rather than the configured value (this usually comes from dhcp option 82 which includes the customer-id and circuit-id). In an access network, the source address is usually untrusted so instead you would want to have your BNG attach the NAS-Port-Id to the request (which usually contains the SVLAN and CVLAN).
    by chaz6
  • What's wrong with using BFD for IP over Ethernet? You can put whatever control plane you want on top from simple static route priorities to full blown eBGP and everything inbetween.
    by crest
  • > Even in 2026, a huge number of ISPs still rely on PPPoE, including Bell Canada, AT&T Fiber, and Xfinity in the US, along with the vast majority of ISPs in Europe, Asia, and China.

    Comcast (Xfinity) does not use PPPoE.

    by sarabveer
  • An approximate, if imperfect, predictor of PPPoE usage is "did this organization previously deliver packets over twisted pair, especially DSL?". Xfinity/Comcast historically (and currently) delivered packets over coaxial cable -> no PPPoE. All the telcos delivered over DSL -> mostly PPPoE.
    by Arubis
  • PPPoE is pretty much only used for DSL in the US. I'm not sure about elsewhere.

    Xfinity and AT&T Fiber do /not/ use PPPoE. Xfinity is built on DOCSIS, and AT&T Fiber is built on XGSPON. This means neither one relies on PPPoE at the data link layer. XGSPON uses XGEM/XGTC at data link layer, DOCSIS uses MAC (same data link protocol as Ethernet).

    This article is making a bunch of assertions which are just patently false. PPPoE is basically old hat at this point. It's extremely high overhead anyway, so is only used for DSL because DSL is an old approach.

    by tristor
  • VDSL2 is using PPPoE here in europe often. Havent seen it used on PON based internet connections though
    by preisschild
  • Mind telling us which assertions are false? They make no claims about pppoe adoption other than that’s what their connection uses.

    My fibre connection in the uk uses pppoe (2gbps)

    by IneffablePigeon
  • Some of AT&T's fiber acquisitions still use PPPoE including CenturyLink and Quantum's fiber offerings (acquired from Lumen).
    by dlgeek
  • It's extremely high overhead anyway, so is only used for DSL because DSL is an old approach.

    I have 4Gbit symmetric fiber over PPPoE (+ a VLAN) in NL. It's quite common here in Europe. The Unifi Cloud Gateway Fiber, handles it well though (as mentioned in the article).

    by microtonal