I just got dsl a few days ago, and the equipement is a speedsteam 5100b dsl modem. It has pppoe built into the modem which can be turned off via the built in web server. I don't understand how the bsd compression for ppp? inflate and deflate works, but i suspect it cannot with the ppp on the modem itself. Before, with a regular modem when i downloaded highly compressable material like text from web pages and headers from usenet, my gkrellm sensors app would show me that the data was compressible with big peaks and extended data fetches of well over the speeds a regular modem is capable of.
Now with the dsl modem's ppp, gkrellm is just showing me a straight line speed, whether the data is compressable or not.
If i disable the onboard ppp, and try to setup the adsl stuff in linux, i would have to hit the reset button on the bottom of the modem to put the modem back like it is now, and i'm worried i'll lose some settings that sbc may have put in there while they tweak my dsl over the next several days.
Am i guessing wrong about the bsd ppp compression?

As an aside, it took me a few hours to figure out that i didn't need the adsl and ppp software off the bat, and i just had to start dhcpcd to bring up the connection.