pppoe
PPPOE(8) PPPOE(8)
NAME
pppoe - user-space PPPoE client.
SYNOPSIS
pppd pty 'pppoe [pppoe_options]' [pppd_options]
pppoe -A [pppoe_options]
DESCRIPTION
pppoe is a user-space client for PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over
Ethernet) for Linux and other UNIX systems. pppoe works in concert
with the pppd PPP daemon to provide a PPP connection over Ethernet, as
is used by many ADSL service providers.
OPTIONS
-I interface
The -I option specifies the Ethernet interface to use. Under
Linux, it is typically eth0 or eth1. The interface should be
"up" before you start pppoe, but should not be configured to
have an IP address.
-T timeout
The -T option causes pppoe to exit if no session traffic is
detected for timeout seconds. I recommend that you use this
option as an extra safety measure, but if you do, you should
make sure that PPP generates enough traffic so the timeout will
normally not be triggered. The best way to do this is to use
the lcp-echo-interval option to pppd. You should set the PPPoE
timeout to be about four times the LCP echo interval.
-D file_name
The -D option causes every packet to be dumped to the specified
file_name. This is intended for debugging only; it produces
huge amounts of output and greatly reduces performance.
-V The -V option causes pppoe to print its version number and exit.
-A The -A option causes pppoe to send a PADI packet and then print
the names of access concentrators in each PADO packet it
receives. Do not use this option in conjunction with pppd; the
-A option is meant to be used interactively to give interesting
information about the access concentrator.
-S service_name
Specifies the desired service name. pppoe will only initiate
sessions with access concentrators which can provide the speci-
fied service. In most cases, you should not specify this
option. Use it only if you know that there are multiple access
concentrators or know that you need a specific service name.
-C ac_name
Specifies the desired access concentrator name. pppoe will only
initiate sessions with the specified access concentrator. In
most cases, you should not specify this option. Use it only if
you know that there are multiple access concentrators. If both
the -S and -C options are specified, they must both match for
pppoe to initiate a session.
-U Causes pppoe to use the Host-Uniq tag in its discovery packets.
This lets you run multiple pppoe daemons without having their
discovery packets interfere with one another. You must supply
this option to all pppoe daemons if you intend to run multiple
daemons simultaneously.
-s Causes pppoe to use synchronous PPP encapsulation. If you use
this option, then you must use the sync option with pppd. You
are encouraged to use this option if it works, because it
greatly reduces the CPU overhead of pppoe. However, it MAY be
unreliable on slow machines -- there is a race condition between
pppd writing data and pppoe reading it. For this reason, the
default setting is asynchronous. If you encounter bugs or
crashes with Synchronous PPP, turn it off -- don't e-mail me for
support!
-m MSS Causes pppoe to clamp the TCP maximum segment size at the speci-
fied value. Because of PPPoE overhead, the maximum segment size
for PPPoE is smaller than for normal Ethernet encapsulation.
This could cause problems for machines on a LAN behind a gateway
using PPPoE. If you have a LAN behind a gateway, and the gate-
way connects to the Internet using PPPoE, you are strongly rec-
ommended to use a -m 1412 option. This avoids having to set the
MTU on all the hosts on the LAN.
-p file
Causes pppoe to write its process-ID to the specified file.
This can be used to locate and kill pppoe processes.
-e sess:mac
Causes pppoe to skip the discovery phase and move directly to
the session phase. The session is given by sess and the MAC
address of the peer by mac. This mode is not meant for normal
use; it is designed only for pppoe-server(8).
-n Causes pppoe not to open a discovery socket. This mode is not
meant for normal use; it is designed only for pppoe-server(8).
-k Causes pppoe to terminate an existing session by sending a PADT
frame, and then exit. You must use the -e option in conjunction
with this option to specify the session to kill. This may be
useful for killing sessions when a buggy peer does not realize
the session has ended.
-d Causes pppoe to perform discovery and then exit, after printing
session information to standard output. The session information
is printed in exactly the format expected by the -e option.
This option lets you initiate a PPPoE discovery, perform some
other work, and then start the actual PPP session. Be careful;
if you use this option in a loop, you can create many sessions,
which may annoy your peer.
-f disc:sess
The -f option sets the Ethernet frame types for PPPoE discovery
and session frames. The types are specified as hexadecimal
numbers separated by a colon. Standard PPPoE uses frame types
8863:8864. You should not use this option unless you are abso-
lutely sure the peer you are dealing with uses non-standard
frame types. If your ISP uses non-standard frame types, com-
plain!
-h The -h option causes pppoe to print usage information and exit.
PPPOE BACKGROUND
PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet) is described in RFC 2516
and is a protocol which allows the session abstraction to be maintained
over bridged Ethernet networks.
PPPoE works by encapsulating PPP frames in Ethernet frames. The proto-
col has two distinct stages: The discovery and the session stage.
In the discovery stage, the host broadcasts a special PADI (PPPoE
Active Discovery Initiation) frame to discover any access concentra-
tors. The access concentrators (typically, only one access concentra-
tor) reply with PADO (PPPoE Active Discovery Offer) packets, announcing
their presence and the services they offer. The host picks one of the
access concentrators and transmits a PADR (PPPoE Active Discovery
Request) packet, asking for a session. The access concentrator replies
with a PADS (PPPoE Active Discovery Session-Confirmation) packet. The
protocol then moves to the session stage.
In the session stage, the host and access concentrator exchange PPP
frames embedded in Ethernet frames. The normal Ethernet MTU is 1500
bytes, but the PPPoE overhead plus two bytes of overhead for the encap-
sulated PPP frame mean that the MTU of the PPP interface is at most
1492 bytes. This causes all kinds of problems if you are using a Linux
machine as a firewall and interfaces behind the firewall have an MTU
greater than 1492. In fact, to be safe, I recommend setting the MTU of
machines behind the firewall to 1412, to allow for worst-case TCP and
IP options in their respective headers.
Normally, PPP uses the Link Control Protocol (LCP) to shut down a PPP
link. However, the PPPoE specification allows the link to be shut down
with a special PADT (PPPoE Active Discovery Terminate) packet. This
client recognizes this packet and will correctly terminate if a termi-
nate request is received for the PPP session.
DESIGN GOALS
My design goals for this PPPoE client were as follows, in descending
order of importance:
o It must work.
o It must be a user-space program and not a kernel patch.
o The code must be easy to read and maintain.
o It must be fully compliant with RFC 2516, the proposed PPPoE
standard.
o It must never hang up forever -- if the connection is broken, it
must detect this and exit, allowing a wrapper script to restart
the connection.
o It must be fairly efficient.
I believe I have achieved all of these goals, but (of course) am open
to suggestions, patches and ideas. See my home page, http://www.roar-
ingpenguin.com, for contact information.
NOTES
For best results, you must give pppd an mtu option of 1492. I have
observed problems with excessively-large frames unless I set this
option. Also, if pppoe is running on a firewall machine, all machines
behind the firewall should have MTU's of 1412.
If you have problems, check your system logs. pppoe logs interesting
things to syslog. You may have to turn on logging of debug-level mes-
sages for complete diagnosis.
AUTHORS
pppoe was written by David F. Skoll <dfs@roaringpenguin.com>, with much
inspiration from an earlier version by Luke Stras.
The pppoe home page is http://www.roaringpenguin.com/pppoe/.
SEE ALSO
adsl-start(8), adsl-stop(8), adsl-connect(8), pppd(8), pppoe.conf(5),
adsl-setup(8), adsl-status(8), pppoe-sniff(8), pppoe-server(8), pppoe-
relay(8)
4th Berkeley Distribution 3 July 2000 PPPOE(8)
