+[ PPPoA] is an Acronym for [PPP] over [ATM], a protocol which is commonly used for [ADSLModems] such as World-Net's [AccessRunner|AccessRunnerADSLModem] and D-Link AHL110. The default PPP distribution for linux does not come with PPPoA support and neither does the debian packages in either woody, sarge, or sid. However there are patches floating around to add this functionality. The patches provided below are originally from the current SuSe version of ppp which ships with PPPoA support. I have extracted these patches and verified that they work with both the standard ppp-2.4.1 distribution and the debian sarge ppp-2.4.1 source package. 

+You'll need a kernel that has ATM support compiled in. Make sure the following options are enabled:  

+<verbatim>  

+ [*] Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers 

+ [*] Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) (EXPERIMENTAL)  

+ [*] Classical IP over ATM (NEW) 

+You'll also need standard PPP support in your kernel, for obvious reasons:  

+ [*] PPP multilink support (EXPERIMENTAL)  

+ [*] PPP filtering 

+''Note - at least one person had trouble with pppoa not working which was apparently solved by compiling atm and ppp over atm support into the kernel instead of as modules ''. - The problem with using modules for pppoa is that if you use too many you get a large dependency tree, this is the problem mentioned above. It is entirely possible to run pppoa (and other ppp related code) as modules provided that you are aware of the dependencies and ensure that the modules are loaded in the correct order.%%% 

+''I've not yet seen modprobe do it correctly (i've never spent the time trying), i am not sure what the correct order is and it is dependent on what parts you have as modules and what parts are built in, specifically I think that pppoa requires pppoe to add some hooks but as they are not strictly dependent on each other the information that modprobe requires is not present. --MattBrown''%%%  

+''There are problems with Kernel Oops when you try doing all this with Kernel version 2.4.22 - this is supposed to be fixed in the 'pre' patches for 2.4.23, but 2.4.21 works fine. --WarrenBoyd''%%%  

+''There are problems with Kernel Errors leading to stalled pppd with latest 2.4.X and 2.6.0 when using ipv6 on ppp with ipv6 ipsec enabled. Deactivate ipv6 privacy extensions in your kernel for pppd to reconnect correctly. dmesg error is unregister_netdevice: waiting for ppp0 to become free. Usage count = 1. --~TheMadHatter ''