What is PPPoE?
It is how you sell home internet: every house gets its own username and password, its own speed, and its own monthly bill. Here is how it works and what you need to run it.
A key for every house
Imagine running a cable from your network into twenty homes. Everyone is connected — but you have no idea who is who. You cannot give one house a faster package than another, you cannot switch off the one person who has not paid, and anyone who quietly plugs into your cable is online for free.
PPPoE solves exactly that. Every customer gets their own username and password — a key to your network. Their router at home uses that key to dial in. Yours checks it, recognises which customer it is, and applies that customer's speed. Turn one key off, and one house goes dark. Everyone else stays online.
That is the whole idea. Everything else — the billing, the reminders, the automatic disconnection — is machinery built on top of being able to tell your customers apart.
The mental picture
A block of flats with one main door. PPPoE gives every tenant their own key. You decide who gets a key, how wide their door opens, and whose key stops working this month — without disturbing anybody else.
How a customer gets connected
Five steps. After the first install, all of them repeat by themselves every time the customer's router powers on.
A cable reaches the house
Fibre or a wireless link runs from your network to the customer's home, ending at a small router of theirs — the CPE.
Their router dials in
You give the customer a username and password. Those are typed into their router at the house, and it dials your network automatically every time it powers on.
Your router checks them
Your MikroTik runs a PPPoE server. It looks up the username, confirms the password, and confirms the account is still active.
Their speed is applied
The account carries a plan — say 10 Mbps. Your router applies that limit to this customer only, the moment they connect.
Payment keeps it alive
When the month's payment lands, nothing happens — they stay online. When it doesn't, the account is disabled and the house goes offline until they pay.
The point people get backwards
The username and password go on the customer's router at their house, never on yours. Your MikroTik is the server that checks credentials; theirs is the client that presents them. Jasiyo sets up your side automatically — the only thing that leaves your office is the customer's username and password.
What you need to start
Six things. The difference from hotspot is that one of them repeats for every single customer you sign.
An internet line
Bandwidth bought in bulk from an upstream provider. Unlike hotspot, subscribers expect it to work all month, so capacity planning matters more.
Your biggest running costA MikroTik router
It runs the PPPoE server: checking passwords, handing out addresses, and enforcing each customer's speed. PPPoE is heavier on the CPU than hotspot.
One-off purchaseA way to reach each home
Fibre, or point-to-point wireless links. This is the real cost and the real work of PPPoE — every customer needs a physical path to your network.
Cost per customerA router at each house
The CPE. It holds the customer's username and password, dials your network, and shares the connection over Wi-Fi inside their home.
One per subscriberAn M-Pesa Paybill or Till
For monthly collection. With Daraja API credentials, payments can reconnect a suspended customer automatically, with nobody touching anything.
Free to apply forA billing system
The software that creates each account, applies its speed, chases the payment, suspends non-payers and restores them the moment they pay.
This is what Jasiyo isThe thing that decides your margin
Every PPPoE customer costs you cable, labour and a router before they pay you a shilling. Sign houses that are close together and each new one gets cheaper. Chase one customer far from your network and a single install can eat months of their fee.
What a billing system actually does
Six jobs — and what you would be doing by hand instead, every month, for every customer.
Creates the account
Generates the username and password on your MikroTik and attaches the right speed plan, so a new customer is ready before the technician leaves.
You would log into the router and type each subscriber in by hand.
Enforces the speed
Applies the plan's limit to that one customer. Upgrade them to a faster package and the change reaches the router without anyone reconfiguring it.
Every upgrade or downgrade would mean editing the router manually.
Collects every month
Tracks who owes what and when, takes the M-Pesa payment, and matches it to the right subscriber automatically.
You would reconcile M-Pesa messages against a list of names each month.
Suspends and restores
Disables the account when payment is overdue, and brings it straight back the moment the money arrives — including at 2am on a Sunday.
Non-payers stay online until you notice, and payers wait for you to wake up.
Reminds them before it hurts
Texts each customer before their due date, and confirms by SMS once payment is received.
Your first contact with a customer is them calling angry about being cut off.
Shows you the business
Who has paid, who is overdue, which package sells, how much each customer is actually using, and what you earned this month.
You would be running a subscription business out of a notebook.
With twenty customers you can do all of this by hand. At a hundred you cannot — and the month you slip is the month non-payers stay online and paying customers stay cut off.
PPPoE or hotspot?
These are the two ways to sell internet. Most ISPs eventually do both.
PPPoE (home internet)
- Customers pay a fixed amount monthly
- A cable or wireless link to each home
- Subscribers who stay for years
- Best in residential estates
- Larger amounts, fewer customers
- Costs you money before they pay
Hotspot
- Customers pay per hour, day or week
- No cable to anyone's house
- Walk-up customers, no contract
- Best where people gather
- Small amounts, many customers
- Earns from day one
Common questions
Now you know how it works
Jasiyo creates the accounts, applies the speeds, collects the M-Pesa, and suspends and restores customers on its own. Try it free for 7 days.
KSh 25 per active customer · min KSh 1,000/mo · KSh 500 onboarding · Cancel anytime