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PPPoE overview

PPPoE is the service you use for home and business broadband: fibre, wireless point-to-point or cabled links where each customer has their own username and password and dials in from a router or ONT. ISPMan keeps each customer’s account, package, expiry date and wallet, and tells your MikroTik who may connect and at what speed.

Use PPPoE when a customer has a fixed installation and pays a recurring subscription (weekly, monthly and so on). For walk-up Wi-Fi sold by the hour or day, use Hotspot. For customers on a fixed IP address with no PPPoE login, use Statics.

How it works

Section titled “How it works”
  1. You create packages (speed, price and how long a payment lasts).
  2. You add customers, each on a package and, usually, a router device.
  3. The customer pays into their own account number (for example by M-Pesa). The payment extends their Paid Until date by one package period.
  4. While they are paid up, their router can dial in at the package speed. When the period ends, ISPMan tries to renew from the customer’s balance; if there isn’t enough, the customer is cut off until they pay.

Two places to find PPPoE

Section titled “Two places to find PPPoE”

The dashboard has two PPPoE entry points. They show the same customers, but they are built for different jobs.

Menu Path Use it for
Services → PPPoEs /dashboard/pppoes Day-to-day management. This is the hub: Add PPPoE Customer, Import, Export, Dispatch PINs, Assign IPs, Bulk Actions and Compensation, the status tabs (Expired, Unpaid, Active and so on), the expiry chips, plus links to Recent Logs, Recent Accounting and Packages.
PPPoE (side menu) /dashboard/pppoe/... Read-only views and records: Customers, Packages, Invoices, Sessions, Auth Logs and Acct Logs. The Customers list here has Export to Excel; the Packages list points you back to Services → PPPoEs to create or edit packages.

In short: create and change things from Services → PPPoEs; use the PPPoE menu to look things up, to see live sessions and logs, and to issue invoices.

Clicking a customer anywhere opens their customer page at /dashboard/customers/pppoe/<id>.

Getting started checklist

Section titled “Getting started checklist”
  1. Set up the PPPoE server on your MikroTik. See Router setup.
  2. Create your packages. See Packages.
  3. Add or import your customers. See Customers.
  4. Understand renewals, grace periods and installation fees. See Billing and expiry.
  5. Learn the tools for when things go wrong: Sessions and logs and Bulk actions and compensation.

The PPPoEs hub at a glance

Section titled “The PPPoEs hub at a glance”
  • Status tabs: All, Expired, Unpaid, Active, Inactive, Connected and Interested in another package. You can switch several on at once.
  • By expiry chips: Expiring Today, Expiring Tomorrow, Expiring in 3 Days, Expiring This Week, Expired Today, Expired Yesterday, Expired 3 Days Ago and Expired This Week. These use your ISP’s time zone.
  • Customer table columns: Name, Account, Custom Account, Username, Phone Number, Static IP, Package, Next / Interested Package, Device, Connection, Paid Until, Active, Branch (when branches are on), Location and Last Seen. Each column can be filtered.
  • Recent payments from PPPoE customers.

Your home dashboard also has a PPPoE customers status card (online, offline, online but expired, deactivated). Click a tile to see the customers behind it.

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