Simon’s Blog

In recent months, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the UK have been changing the way they provide ADSL Broadband connections to their customers (both businesses and consumers).   Specifically, they have been dropping support for a networking protocol called PPPoE in favour of one called PPPoA.

This probably won’t affect your home connection because most networking equipment designed for the home supports both PPPoE and PPPoA.   However, if you use an Apple Airport Extreme or your Enterprise network connects to the Internet via ADSL, you may have a problem.  And by problem, I mean that your Internet connection will stop working.  That’s because most hardware aimed at business use doesn’t support PPPoA.

The solution is to use a PPPoE to PPPoA bridge that will let your PPPoE equipment connect to the Internet.   The product I’d recommend for this is the Draytek Vigor110.   We just installed one this afternoon, and it works like a dream.

The Vigor110 is an ADSL Ethernet Modem… with a difference.   The great thing about this product is that absolutely no setup or configuration is required because it allows your PPPoE hardware to control the Internet connection directly.   So, you simply plug your ADSL phone connection into the Vigor110, and connect it to your PPPoE client device (e.g. a PPPoE router) via Ethernet, and you’re done.  It takes literally thirty seconds to install.