Re: Fw: Bug: PPP dropouts in >=2.6.16

[Nuri Jawad <lkml@jawad.org>]

Good evening,

Bugzilla entry on this is now here:
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6484

Note the interesting fact that kernel mode PPPoE is not affected. Thus it 
could also be a bug in Roaring Penguin's PPPoE program. The problem is 
that all other user space implementations seem to be quite outdated
(made for 2.2 kernels).

I still did observe around 500 packets being lost after a night of pinging 
this machine, compared to around 30 with 2.6.15.7 user mode pppoe and 
700-1100 with >=2.6.16 user mode. I made a little perl script that 
generates a histogram from ping's output and there were only single 
packets lost.
However, just when I was about to test kernel mode with 2.6.15.7 tonight, 
this effect disappeared. Might have been my ISP after all.

Thus, for the time being, kernel mode PPPoE seems to be a viable 
workaround.
The whole matter is a bit strange to me. I would have expected that the 
kernel only communicates with pppd which then utilizes a process 
encapsulating the packts in ethernet frames. That's why I didn't
think this bug was a pure pppoe issue, which it seems to be.

Regards, Nuri