IPoE and Static IP on EE Full Fibre anytime soon?

[Ollmall]

Wondering if anyone has any information on when or if EE will start offering IPoE instead of nasty old PPPoE anytime soon?

I know there’s been calls for ISPs, especially the past few years, to start dropping PPPoE in favour of more lightweight options like IPoE and apparently TalkTalk and Sky are already doing it on their services.

As fibre speeds increase pass the gigabit point, PPPoE starts to take a heavy toll and shows it’s limitations especially when you starting adding in any sort of DPI or IDS network security on top of it.

It would also be super nice if we could get a static IPV4 address. It seems almost every day right now that I’m being given a new WAN address which in certain use cases is not ideal.

[bobpullen]

I think it's unlikley on both points.

If you need static addressing then look to dynamic DNS services; As far as IPoE is concerned, I doubt it makes much all that much practical difference, especially as > Gbps becomes more commonplace.

Edit: If your WAN IP is changing, then your Internet connection is dropping.

[Ollmall]

It makes far more sense as faster speeds become available. PPPoE has massive overheads and CPU requirements compared to IPoE. Add in any kind of deep packet inspection or security to that overhead and you get to the point where PPPoE is a hindrance. 

I believe Sky and TalkTalk have already moved to IPoE and the ISPs on CityFibre that provide a multi-gig service are also doing the same because of those PPPoE limitations. 

[bobpullen]

@Ollmall - fair points, but it becomes a question of what the CPU belongs to really. Yes, PPPoE has overheads, but are you likely to notice much real world difference if the kit can handle it? When you surpass Gbps speeds, what noticable difference does a small percentage overhead have? 🤔

[Ollmall]

I'm noticing it for sure. 

I use a Unifi Dream Machine Pro which is not exactly entry level hardware.

I have the EE 1.6gbps service which the UDM Pro achieves at full speed UNLESS I turn on network security. That then drops it to about 1.2gbps. Sure when we're talking at that level of speed it doesn't sound like much but that's still a 400mbps impact which obviously equates to 40MB/S of download speed give or take.

That does make a noticeable difference when you're downloading massive files.

The UDM Pro is capable of handling a 10gbps WAN connection which is then limited to 3.5gbps with the security detections enabled. People do achieve those speeds and in fact get closer to 4-4.5gbps with IDS/IPS enabled rather than the quoted 3.5gbps.

However those numbers don't account for PPPoE overheads and are using IPoE. The CPU in the UDM Pro gets pinned to 100% usage when doing a full speed download at my speeds via PPPoE. In other iPerf tests I've seen with people getting the full 10gbps throughput without PPPoE the CPU barely breaks 40-50%. It just goes to show that the faster we go, the more of a limitation this will become. 

[bobpullen]

@Ollmall - again, fair comments. Personally, the couple of aftermarket devices I've used haven't been subject to such limitations, and I'd say they're more 'Prosumer' versus the Enterprise-positioned UDM Pro.

I suppose any desire to change the network design would be driven from whether or not the EE-provided kit can handle things. After all, that's what the vast majority of customers are likely to be using, and I imagine there's a fair bit of cost involved in switching things up.

Time will tell I guess if/when Openreach introduce XG(S)-PON 🤔