WAN Services /

Verizon DSL 2: Descent into PPPoE Hell

By Kevin Tolly
Network World, 01/22/01

Late last year, after months in DSL purgatory, my cries for help were answered by a reader - who happened to be with Verizon tech support. My access concentrator was alive, but I wasn't ready for what came next - my descent into Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) hell.

My first column, "Verizon's DSL horizon," generated the most e-mail I'd received all year. On the day after the story was published, I received an e-mail from a gentleman at Verizon (not responsible for my quandary) who offered to help. I fed him my DSL subscriber line info and, within two hours, the DSL circuit was live.

The root cause had nothing to do with the myriad of issues a previous tech had asked me to check. It was a central-office software problem. Fixed in a flash, without a site visit - and without the need for me to talk to tech support. This outcome supports my thesis that the problem is not with technology, but with Verizon's management of the technology.

With a live circuit, I was now ready for "Step 1" of my journey - installing the software that would enable my logical connection to the central office and allow me to start using DSL to reach the Internet. Thus began my travails with the technological abomination known as PPPoE.

WinPoet is a package by Wind River Software, but "supported" by Verizon, that implements PPPoE.

Well, let me back up. When we reach the Internet via a LAN, that communication takes place across our Ethernet adapter - and my TCP/IP traffic is carried in Ethernet's Layer 2 framing. When I use my DSL modem to connect, the traffic goes out over a Com port instead and gets carried via PPP.

PPPoE (RFC 2516) takes a straightforward Ethernet environment - across which I communicate with my DSL access concentrator - and transforms into a grotesque pseudo-WAN. PPPoE "inserts" PPP under TCP and over Ethernet. Why? I just don't know.

Scanning around the Internet, I found one statement that the goal of PPPoE was "to preserve the dial-up experience." Just what is so great about that experience that you'd want to preserve? I thought we went to DSL to get away from that experience.

Needless to say, I had problems. At the Wind River Web site, the company seemed to disavow any knowledge of the product - instead pointing me to Verizon where, naturally, there was no information.

After a lengthy search, I found a WinPoet "manual," but it turned out to be 58 pages of nothing - bloated screen shots you'd see during the install.

I ended up installing the trial version of Agilent Advisor Software Edition on each machine I worked with so to trace the PPPoE failure (because WinPoet's diagnostics were nonexistent). That I should have to go to such extremes to install "end user" connectivity says something about Verizon's approach to DSL.

When DSL works, it screams; but getting it to work often makes users scream.