James,

> I will venture a guess here: they don't want to deploy a new protocol. 

It would be good to get the exact details from Ric or Mark or whoever
knows them. But my understanding is that their desires relate to
the following:

- Moving away from a user/password authentication that the
  PPPoE users had would require changes in the business
  processes, e.g., relying on line ID only.

  And it would be a good thing to be able to move around with
  your subscription. Assuming of course that the lower layers
  in the DSL system are capable of allowing that without
  some configuration.

  (And of course, its also a Good Thing to move away from
  PPPoE... we should support that.)

- Moving away from AAA-based authentication would imply
  changes in how subscriber data is managed and served.

- DSLAMs are already looking at DHCP packets and filtering
  them appropriately. A new protocol would require changes
  in DSLAMs.

- 802.1x runs between a port and a switch, I think this means
  that in the DSL world this would translate into a requirement
  for the DSLAM rather than the BRAS performing the
  authentication.

- Practical implementations on the BRAS side currently do
  the option 82 processing in the DHCP code, so new processing
  steps for related purposes are convenient to have in the
  same part of the code.

The different reasons have a different nature. The first two
items do not imply that a DHCP-based solution is needed, just
that some AAA-based approach is. Last item is more about
convenience than anything else. Not sure what would be
involved in the third and fourth items.

Jari



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