Draytek's and PPPoE Digital Region *FIX*

After a lot of headscratching yesterday afternoon, I finally got my Draytek working with the Origin/PPPoE broadband.

I was getting errors stating : MESSAGE : No response from the server side.

I tried talking to their technical support team to see if there was a fault, but they couldn't work out what was wrong.

Lots of factory resets later, and even proving the connection works by creating a DUN profile on the Laptop I found out what was wrong.

On the Draytek's, you can set a display name for the connection. I had set it to Origin Broadband and T-Mobile for my 3G Dongle failover.

Turns out the Drayteks pass this display name along with the PPPoE credentials and it confuses the Cellpipe.

Remove the Display Name, and the connection jumped into life.

Happy Days.

Just on the phone to their support team again to let them know just in case they have any other customers with the same issue.

Draytek's use the display name from the web UI as the PPPoE service name, if your display name doesn't match the PPPoE service name the AC is using then no PPPoE session will be set up as you found

Please don't tell me Origin have started using PPPoE?

They promised me when I signed up to them (its WHY I signed up to them instead of Ask4) that they would never do that.

Certainly PPPoE on my box. Out of curiosity care to explain what the issue is. My main concern was that DNS was coming through as 8.8.8.8 which isn't the best.

which draytek are you using, if the vdsl versions then no need for cellpipe or will digital region still only allow you to use their modems

PPPoE adds extra overhead to the router, so you need a faster router to achieve the same speed.

It could potentially also add latency, although beyond my personal paranoia its probably not that bad. After all, Infinity uses PPPoE and walkerx is getting far lower pings on there than we are on Origin.

What is a cause for concern though is that some routers, mine included, are known to be a bit unstable for PPPoE use. So I can only hope that the fact I switched to OpenWRT will have resolved this problem.

As to using your own VDSL2 router, I amm 99% sure yes you can as Oliver specifically told me if I got one he would give me the details I would need to use it.

which draytek are you using, if the vdsl versions then no need for cellpipe or will digital region still only allow you to use their modems

2820VN, only adsl/ethernet and 3g.

Hmm wonder if that's why my connection with Origin has been flakey lately :/

Can you be more specific than flakey? I know my DSL sync seems to have been dropping more frequently, but it could be I never noticed before and its not a problem for me as its only very brief and not daily.

We are on the old network via Digital City Region, which they are in the process of splitting with. Some time soon we (me hopefully early this week) should get moved over to the new network which will be Origins own.

It could be a real ball ache as I if they indeed have switch to PPPoE then everyone is going to need to change their router settings. Those of us with a static IP address will have to change our router settings anyway, as the current IP range are registered to Digital City Region and we need to switch to an Origin IP. They REALLY should be e-mailing all their old customers to inform them this change is coming. Its not going to be good if they just come home from work one day and its all broken.

I'm guessing they realised that it would be costly to order enough IP addresses to maintain the plain ethernet routing, so switched to PPPoE like every other ISP (barring O2/Be).

Its annoying as Oliver promised me they wouldn't use PPPoE, but understandable as I get the feeling there is more to this change of network than meets the eye. It seems suspicious that Origin had this problem of not being able to connection new customers, then suddenly bam all new customers are being connected to the NEW network. Did Digital City Region refuse Origin connection of new customer forcing them to rush out and form this new network? Or was it just problems with the transition?

I wish Origin were being more up front and honest about all this.

I'm not annoyed that there may be a change, I'm annoying that the first I am hearing about it is from some random person on Sheffield Forum.

I do suspect that Origin bit of more than they could chew and suddenly realised that being a ViSP just wasn't going to work long-term. For example now they seem to be saying "we will always try to avoid traffic management" when I'm pretty sure they originally claimed "we will NEVER use traffic management". I think they realised that promising things like that is unwise as what you are capable of doing is always in flux.

There may come a day when the influx of customers is just too high and they have to implement some management temporarily to prevent network meltdown. I just hope not, as I think that is how Virgin Media started and now they rely on the management to prevent total network overload which provides an utter garbage service for the end user if you happen to need a reliable, consistent ping and upload speed.

As I have said before, I originally left Force9 (PlusNet) when they were the first ISP to use traffic management and it ruined my connection. I have been chasing none-managed ISPs ever since.

2820VN, only adsl/ethernet and 3g.

Just bear in mind that router can only handle up to 50Mbit, so no upgrade to 100Mbit for you.

Why do people care so much about the inner workings of their isp's network? Fair enough question their intentions on traffic management but they are under no obligation to tell you anything about how their network works. Not that you couldn't work out if anything has changed with some basic tests.

Oh, maybe because I specifically asked Origin on the phone if they used PPPoE because I found out the router I had JUST bought had issues with PPPoE. So yes, its highly relevant how the inner working of your ISP works.

Also knowing how your ISP works can give you an idea of how badly they will be impacted if one of their peers is overloaded or has routing problems. Or how likely they will get overloaded. So its relevant to how reliable your ISP will be.

Just look at Virgin Media, people flock to it because they advertise the fastest speeds and are a well known big company. But their actual service can leave a lot to be desired because their network is highly contended at the street cabinets.

isp's will always be evolving and changing and switching to pppoe gives better security and tracibility.

while on pppoe they can gather more stats that otherwise they would have to go to thales for and this was why ripwire moved to pppoe.

also moving to pppoe also enables the isp and the end user to confirm if there are any issues on the connection like disconnections which using current settings for dynamic/static ip addressing is harder to follow and prove to the isp.

overall yes it may add a few overheads moving to pppoe but nothing to really worry about

on final note if i had a purchased a router and found there was a known fault with the protocols (ie pppoe) i would have returned it as not suitable.