The new pppoe link will be named cwcc@a.2 because for some reason there always was hole there - perhaps something to do with a 3G link that died or was cancelled later leaving a hole.
No wonder you cannot fathom how it will work.
I have no free ethernet ports on the Firebrick router. Four ethernet ports in total, one going to the LAN, main switch, and the remaining each going to one modem each and it is already full.
So the standard recipe for people who have more WAN links is to use multiplexing.
AA has delivered a small ZyXEL GS-1900 gigabit switch with 8 ethernet ports on it which speaks VLANs ie 802.1q tagging. Also does the Firebrick. also the small switch sits between the group of modems and the Brick. It has one ethernet cable going into it from each modem and one ethernet cable (I could have more) going to the Firebrick. It will be configured by me to remap ethernet ports to 802.1q-tagged packets going to the port connected to the Firebrick. The Firebrick will be reconfigured so that each PPPoE object will now be port 2 VLAN 101, port 2 VLAN 102, port 2 VLAN 103 and port 2 VLAN 104 or some such. The Firebrick just recognises the 802.1q tags on incoming packets and directs them to the correct link object and for outgoing traffic adds the appropriate 802.1q tag to a packet when it goes out and the switch does the muxing / demuxing.
I could alternatively use more ethernet cables between small switch and Firebrick, say two cables with only two VLANs per cable. In my case, the data rate is so incredibly slow though anyway at a mere 2.5 MBps per link, so 10Mbps in total and hardly comes even close to challenging 100MBps ports.
AA have a standard config recipe for the switch. But they refused to configure it for me, for some reason, which is not good. Odd, because they configure modems, WAPs and routers.
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I got an email saying something about BT mentioning delays and have had no installation date. Perhaps this means that BT are going to get nasty like before, many years ago, when I tried to order two lines at the same time and they quoted me thousands of pounds. I though this time they might be actually helpful, and might want to make a sale, because no additional drop cable is needed, all I need is an NTE5 as I already have a free pair in my existing second drop cable.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what the typical delays are, or even O(t_delay) in big-O notation?
This is related to what I was asking about before - what happens with all the new house building in the village, EO lines all >7300m long (because mine is the shortest)? BT will run out of pairs in the bundle at some point and if I am not the straw that breaks the camel’s back but rather some new house down the hill, then BT will have to do something about it. Perhaps I need to strategically wait until just after some new neighbour has out in their request and BT has been compelled to do something. I wonder if they might give up the madness of 7+ km long EO lines and rather than running an additional bundle or a second one (what do they do) perhaps the might out one or even two FTTC cabs in the village? Is there any chance at all of that? (Because I believe BT has implemented FTTC along the main road in Breacais, Harrapul, Broadford and way way all the way up for six miles or so along the main road stretching north from Broadford.)