PPPoE Half-Bridge - Offload PPPoE to a separate device for UniFi gateways
Show HN: We Fixed UniFi's Slow PPPoE Performance with PPPoE Half-Bridge
PPPoE Half-Bridge is an OpenWrt-based solution that fixes the slow PPPoE performance of UniFi gateways by offloading PPPoE dialing to a dedicated device. It uses a hotplug script to strip the public IPv4 from the PPPoE interface and hand it to the UniFi gateway via DHCP, freeing the gateway from PPPoE CPU load. This technique, known as PPPoE Half-Bridge, can boost throughput beyond 5000 Mbps, as demonstrated with a Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro. The project is open-source on GitHub and works with any OpenWrt-compatible device.
We were able to break past 5000 Mbps of PPPoE throughput, proving that offloading PPPoE to a separate device is the key to unlocking full line speed on UniFi gateways.