[gezley]

Originally Posted by sousa

You should really take some time and read the PF User Guide.

I have indeed read that guide a number of times, as well as Jacek Artemiak's book and other resources. However, I could not get an answer to the specific question I asked, which was, does PF have to be disabled in OpenBSD 4.5 until the PPPoE interface is brought up? All I needed was a simple answer - yes or no - which you have now provided me, and for which I am very grateful. My head was spinning with all the information I was trying to take in.

Automatic redial.

I understand that PPPoE will redial; what I wanted to know was how to deal with PF if the connection dropped. But since PF does not have to be disabled while PPPoE is dialling this shouldn't be a concern now.

Assuming that you will be doing NAT and have a dynamic IP, pay attention to this part of the above guide.

The public address is a fixed address, but I do understand the need to put pppoe0 in brackets in the NAT section if the address is dynamic. Many thanks for your time and answer; I had quite a headache trying to work it out. Sometimes I can understand the more complicated things better than the straightforward things!