scratch that, it was an MTU issue
a well know ISP here in australia has somehow made it very hard to connect via pppoe, although it does sometimes at random here is an example of a failure: https://pastebin.com/Tuqy3sHb here is an example of a very infrequent success: https://pastebin.com/X1bnYP1D usernames and ip addresses changed to protect the innocent many people are trying this via pfsense and opnsense (the above are pfsense) and also failing https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2576618&#r54221852 im wondering...