Show HN: We Fixed UniFi's Slow PPPoE Performance with PPPoE Half-Bridge

4 hours ago

UniFi gateways like UDM Pro/SE/Pro Max and EFG lack PPPoE hardware acceleration, limiting PPPoE throughput to 1200-2400 Mbps.
PPPoE's single-threaded processing on most routers causes performance bottlenecks, especially with a single session.
PPPoE Half-Bridge offloads PPPoE dialing to a dedicated device, allowing the main router to avoid CPU load and improve speed.
OpenWrt's hotplug mechanism can implement PPPoE Half-Bridge by handling PPPoE dialing and handing public IPv4 via DHCP.
The solution involves disabling NAT, reading PPPoE IP, setting up DHCP with proper subnet, and adding static ARP for UniFi gateways.
A Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro running OpenWrt was tested, achieving over 5000 Mbps PPPoE throughput via this method.

Setting up a homelab begins with proper networking; MikroTik L009UiGS-RM is chosen for multiple Gigabit Ethernet ports and PoE capabilities.
Before configuration, identify ISP setup: authentication method (IPoE or PPPoE) and IPv4 type (public vs. private/CGNAT).
For PPPoE with VLAN, clone ISP router's MAC address on MikroTik's WAN port and create VLAN interface before PPPoE client setup.

IPv6-only networks still rely on IPv4 subnets and ARP, which introduces operational costs and complexity.
The IETF proposal introduces a sentinel IPv4 address (192.0.0.11) that allows IPv4 to operate over IPv6-only infrastructure without ARP or IPv4 subnets.
ARP causes issues like storms, poisoning, and table exhaustion, while IPv4 addresses waste space and require subnet management.

A router is software running on hardware; any computer can be configured as a router.
This guide shows how to obtain static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses using an L2TP tunnel from Andrews & Arnold Ltd (A&A), bypassing ISP restrictions like CGNAT.
Set up a Debian/BSD machine with two Ethernet interfaces: one for WAN (connected to ISP) and one for LAN (hosting public subnet).

IPv6 provides a massive number of addresses (e.g., a /64 subnet with 18.4 quintillion addresses) that can be used to assign unique IPv6 addresses to individual services on a single server.
Using IPv6 with Cloudflare allows each service to listen on its own IPv6 address, while Cloudflare handles IPv4 to IPv6 translation for users without IPv6 support, eliminating the need for a reverse proxy for routing.
This method reduces single points of failure compared to using a reverse proxy, as each service has its own address and can fail independently.

OpenAI uses WebRTC to serve voice AI to 900 million weekly users, but faces challenges with Kubernetes due to WebRTC's need for stable IPs and ports.
Their solution splits the architecture into a stateless relay at the geographic edge for packet routing and a stateful transceiver that manages WebRTC protocol state.
The relay uses the ICE ufrag field from WebRTC setup packets as a routing key to direct the first packet to the correct transceiver, avoiding database lookups.

Setting up a homelab begins with proper networking; MikroTik L009UiGS-RM is chosen for multiple Gigabit Ethernet ports and PoE capabilities.
Before configuration, identify ISP setup: authentication method (IPoE or PPPoE) and IPv4 type (public vs. private/CGNAT).
For PPPoE with VLAN, clone ISP router's MAC address on MikroTik's WAN port and create VLAN interface before PPPoE client setup.

IPv6-only networks still rely on IPv4 subnets and ARP, which introduces operational costs and complexity.
The IETF proposal introduces a sentinel IPv4 address (192.0.0.11) that allows IPv4 to operate over IPv6-only infrastructure without ARP or IPv4 subnets.
ARP causes issues like storms, poisoning, and table exhaustion, while IPv4 addresses waste space and require subnet management.

A router is software running on hardware; any computer can be configured as a router.
This guide shows how to obtain static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses using an L2TP tunnel from Andrews & Arnold Ltd (A&A), bypassing ISP restrictions like CGNAT.
Set up a Debian/BSD machine with two Ethernet interfaces: one for WAN (connected to ISP) and one for LAN (hosting public subnet).

IPv6 provides a massive number of addresses (e.g., a /64 subnet with 18.4 quintillion addresses) that can be used to assign unique IPv6 addresses to individual services on a single server.
Using IPv6 with Cloudflare allows each service to listen on its own IPv6 address, while Cloudflare handles IPv4 to IPv6 translation for users without IPv6 support, eliminating the need for a reverse proxy for routing.
This method reduces single points of failure compared to using a reverse proxy, as each service has its own address and can fail independently.

OpenAI uses WebRTC to serve voice AI to 900 million weekly users, but faces challenges with Kubernetes due to WebRTC's need for stable IPs and ports.
Their solution splits the architecture into a stateless relay at the geographic edge for packet routing and a stateful transceiver that manages WebRTC protocol state.
The relay uses the ICE ufrag field from WebRTC setup packets as a routing key to direct the first packet to the correct transceiver, avoiding database lookups.

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