PPPoE for ISPs

Stuck customer sessions, duplicate MACs, intermittent authentication, wrong bandwidth after reconnect. Well-configured PPPoE disappears from your radar; poorly configured PPPoE becomes your Thursday on-call shift every week.

What PPPoE is in an ISP context

PPPoE is still the dominant authentication protocol in Brazilian ISPs. The B-RAS (Broadband Remote Access Server) terminates sessions, authenticates via RADIUS, applies the contracted service plan, and routes subscriber traffic. When the B-RAS saturates, every subscriber feels it.

What RASYS does

  • Concentrator sizing — CPU, memory, throughput, concurrent sessions.
  • B-RAS configuration and tuning on Huawei NE8000/NE40, Juniper MX, Cisco ASR, Mikrotik CHR/RouterOS.
  • RADIUS integration — MK-Auth, IXC, SGP, Voalle, FreeRADIUS (Brazilian ISP management systems).
  • High availability — active/passive or active/active B-RAS with subscriber hashing.
  • Stuck session debug — duplicate MAC, partial authentication, lost accounting.
  • Retransmission and drop analysis per PON/aggregator (signals a problem upstream of the B-RAS).
  • Concentrator migration without dropping the active subscriber base.
  • Centralized syslog with correlation by username for incident investigation.

Equipment we work with

Huawei NE8000/NE40/NE20, Juniper MX, Cisco ASR1k/9k, Mikrotik CHR/CCR.

When it makes sense to talk to us

Customers complaining of random session drops; B-RAS approaching session limit; migrating from Mikrotik to carrier-grade equipment (Huawei/Juniper); inherited a config without documentation; want to bring up a second B-RAS for redundancy.

Talk to us — initial conversation, no commitment. See also: RADIUS, OLT and GPON.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Can you migrate PPPoE from Mikrotik to Huawei/Juniper without dropping the subscriber base?

Yes. We configure the new B-RAS in parallel, migrate PON by PON via VLAN trunking, validate sessions, and decommission the old one. Active sessions migrate naturally on the next reconnect (DHCP/PPPoE).

How many PPPoE sessions can a Mikrotik CCR handle?

It depends on the model and the average plan. A CCR2116 handles on average 800-1200 subscribers with plans up to 500 Mbps, provided IPv6 is widely deployed (which offloads a lot of CGNAT and overall PPS on the device). Above that, we recommend a more robust NE40/MX/CHR.

Do you integrate with any management system (MK-Auth, IXC, SGP, Voalle)?

Yes. All of them speak standard RADIUS. We configure the integration and handle vendor-specific attributes when the B-RAS is Huawei/Juniper. MK-Auth, IXC, SGP, and Voalle are Brazilian ISP management systems.

PPPoE or IPoE/DHCP — do you recommend migrating?

We do not recommend it. The current maturity of IPoE/DHCP in the Brazilian ISP market does not deliver a clear gain against the cost and risk of the migration — PPPoE remains more predictable to operate and debug. RASYS works on the PPPoE B-RAS side; ISPs that want to move to IPoE need to evaluate case by case, and it is not the path we recommend by default.