I think it's vital that you can run your own modem but I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to force a custom ONT. An ONT is about as dumb as it gets and it's entirely transparent on the stack.
The benefit with an ONT (or even DOCSIS dumb modem) managed by the ISP is that they can do fleet upgrades much quicker as they don't have to keep all old protocols running. For instance the GPON -> XGSPON upgrade that some ISPs are running right now (or DOCSIS 3 upgrade) really only works well if you can turn off the old protocol which requires swapping out all ONTs/DOCSIS modems.
If customers bring their own stuff then you're stuck with these things for much longer.
In some places it sounds like the ONT is integrated with the router (like with DOCSIS), and being forced to use the ISP’s router is a problem.
But in cases where the ONT just looks like a media converter and you have a separate router I really can’t see any reason for the customer to provide their own ONT. Especially given PON is a shared medium so a misbehaving ONT can affect other customers.
> But in cases where the ONT just looks like a media converter and you have a separate router
That's how it works in New Zealand, but we take it a step further. The GPON/XGS-PON fibre network is run by a separate company[0] from the ISPs (and the company running the fibre network is prohibited from providing internet services[1]). So the ONT just functions as a media converter[2], and all our ISPs deliver internet over the same fibre network. This decoupling between the fibre network provider and ISP means you can change ISPs without any swapping of ONTs or repatching of fibre[3][4] (in fact, the process can be entirely automated, switching to some ISPs can take effect within an hour or two of placing the order). That and most ISPs allow bringing your own router (as there's no monopoly in the ISP space).
[0]: The NZ Government contracted four companies to build, own, and run fibre networks (three being new companies co-owned by local lines companies and the government to serving their local area, with the rest of the country being served by Chorus, the company that owns the country's copper network). These fibre companies are heavily regulated (including how much they can charge ISPs).
[1]: In fact, this requirement resulted in Telecom (the company that owned our copper network and who was one of the companies that provided phone and internet service to consumers) being split up, with Chorus being spun off, owning the copper network and owning the fibre network for the majority of the country.
[2]: Chorus did start deploying ONTs with a built-in router/AP a while back. They did offer this to ISPs to use, but uptake was very low, so it's since been discontinued.
[3]: I don't know how it works over in European countries where ISPs run their own fibre networks when switching ISPs, I assume they have to either install their own fibre line into the premises or the existing fibre is repatched to their network?
[4]: The fibre companies are required to offer use of their fibre network directly to ISPs, with the ISPs PON network running in parallel to the fibre company's, with the ISP providing their own fibre splitters and ONTs (which would be run on a second fibre line that each premises already has) and running their own OLTs. I believe this requirement still exists, but no-one ever took them up on it.
About [3]. In Switzerland most of the fiber network is built by Swisscom, a former telecom monopoly and still 51% state owned company that also owns the old copper network. Other ISPs can use the network but everyone has their own router with an integrated ONT. ONTs as a separate device are pretty much unknown. On XGS-PON only certified ONTs are whitelisted [0] The wholesale price list is public [1] For actuall prices see [2] They differentiate mostly through support, price and additional services like TV. Data caps are basically unheard of (I don't call something like the fiber7 FUP of 600TB a data cap) and CGNAT is, while not uncommon, at most a phone call to disable it.
I am curious about this model. How well is this working in practice? How many ISPs do you have to choose from, and how do they differentiate? How close to wholesale are the retail prices?
I believe the number of ISPs differs regionally (I suspect due to where they have network equipment), but I just put in my adress into the main search website (https://www.broadbandcompare.co.nz) and it came back with 13+ ISPs (although some of them might belong to same parent companies). Prices tend to be quite similar (which I suspect indicates that it is operating close to cost) and differentiation happens mainly on bundling with other services (mobile, power, TV, included Netflix...) Keep in mind that I have only lived here for 1.5 years, but from my limited experience it definitely seems like there is a healthy amount of competition.
Chorus does let ISPs handover in just a single or a couple of points to provide service nationwide (well, for the areas they serve), instead of needing to do it at all 27 handover locations. I imagine it's possible to interconnect with the other fibre companies over a backhaul connection as well. So smaller ISPs can definitely offer service nationwide without having to put networking equipment all over the country.
My understanding is that the margins on fibre connections for ISPs are quite slim. The three big telcos do both broadband and cellular, and they definitely try and push customers with lighter needs over to wireless internet delivered over 4G or 5G (which has more margins for them). There has been a bit of consolidation among the major players (one of the big telcos (2Degrees, who do both broadband and cellular) merged with one of the big broadband-only telcos (Vocus) a couple of years ago). But there's plenty of smaller ISPs. And a couple of the electricity retailers have gotten in on providing internet as well. And it's not uncommon for local WISPs to offer fibre as well.
Differentiation between ISPs is definitely mainly on cost, quality of support, and bundled services. They all have their own networks (the fibre companies only provide L2 connectivity from the customers to the ISPs), and there can be some differences there. For example, another of the big broadband+cellular telcos (Spark, who was the ISP side of Telecom before they were split up) is the only major ISP that doesn't offer IPv6 and doesn't peer at local peering exchanges.
Some ISPs have cheaper plans with data caps, but many ISPs don't even offer data-capped plans, and everyone offers uncapped plans. Similarly, most ISPs let you use your own router. And about the only variation in how you'd need to configure your router is PPPoE vs IPoE/DHCP and VLAN 10 vs untagged. So you can usually switch ISPs and all you need to do is maybe change your router config.
As a side note, of particular interest to the audience here is the existence of a new-ish residential ISP (Quic) that offers things like static IP for a one-off cost, /28 IPv4 subnets, self-service rDNS management, and self-service access to the ONT status, connection logs, etc. One of the advantages of having competition in the ISP space.
It seems to be working quite well in terms of ISP choice (see my reply to cycomanic). And Chorus is offering up to 8 Gbps connections over XGS-PON, with most of the other fibre companies either also offering XGS-PON or working to offer it.
I suppose there are a couple of downsides compared to being able to use your own ONT, in that residential customers can't get SPF ONTs, and Chorus's XGS-PON ONT is quite large and not wall-mountable, which has caused a few people to hold out on XGS-PON offerings (they're working to offer a smaller one, but it got set back a bit, and they also won't start offering it until they run out of the old XGS-PON ONTs). But that's all quite minor (a residential customer wanting an SPF ONT is very niche indeed, as is a genuine need for a residential XGS-PON connection).
> In some places it sounds like the ONT is integrated with the router (like with DOCSIS), and being forced to use the ISP’s router is a problem.
I agree, and that is a problem. The rules and regulations are different in different countries. In Austria for instance the ISP can force you to use a specific DOCSIS modem or ONT but they have to provide you with a transparent way to connect to it (bridge mode etc.). Which from where I'm standing is a good tradeoff because it gives the ISP the flexibility to do mass migrations without having to consider very old deployed infrastructure.
With PON I think it doesn't matter all _that_ much but for instance people running ancient DOCSIS modems and limited frequency availability has been a massive pain for people stuck with DOCSIS infrastructure that want more upstream and can't.
So at least in Portugal, my ISP gives me their device, it has a bridge mode, but it also serves as their wifi access point network (think Xfinity wifi) -- which I don't object to except that their wifi can't be disabled and their signal interferes with my wifi access points.
I want a dumb gpon sfp not because they won't give me a bridge, but because their bridge makes too much noise.
I have to wonder, why can't their wi-fi be disabled? Is it one of those scenarios where it is being used to support other ISP customers in your area?
My ISP (note: also owned by my employer) doesn't have this, so the modem I've got is theirs, but I can disable wi-fi. I do, too, so the only client on this thing is my firewall. I assume that everything past my firewall could potentially be hostile.
> Gleichzeitig gibt es eine gesetzlich garantierte Endgerätefreiheit (Art. 3 Abs. 1 TSM-VO). Auf Grund dieser haben alle Nutzer:innen das Recht, einen Router ihrer Wahl zu verwenden. Stellt der Anbieter einen Router mit integriertem Modem zur Verfügung, muss es möglich sein, diesen Router in den sogenannten "Brigde-Modus" zu schalten.
> Because the Wifi 6 enabled Modem from Magenta doesn't support bridge mode.
It does. Call customer support and they enable it for you. It turns into a dumb modem afterwards behind which you need to put your own infrastructure.
I replaced my Google fiber ONT by cloning the network parameters into a cheap SFP one because the Google supplied one only supports gigabit Ethernet but uses 2.5/1.25gbit optics. The upgrade reduced latency a small, but measurable amount, and improved my NTP jitter.
In theory the ONT can act like a listening device. They're also often Linux or BSD devices that can get hacked.
If you're paranoid, you may want to run an ONT that you control, just in case. I doubt it's something that matters to a lot of people, but even if it only matters to some, it shouldn't be made impossible for those that want to.
RE: misbehaving hardware: the same is very much true for cable internet and there are plenty of countries where people hook up their own modem without any trouble. If someone wanted to mess with the fiber network they could just disconnect the ONT and shine a laser pointer down there. All off-the-shelf devices are built to just work and follow the necessary standards, because there's nothing to be gained by messing with the PON network like that.
> In theory the ONT can act like a listening device
Sure, but so can the other endpoint. Even many AON installations these days are just hidden XPS-PON and similar, you just never see the ONT. (See a lot of ISPs in Switzerland)
Definitely agree. The smart place to demarcate the connection is the point at which a device does DHCP/SLAAC to get whatever IPs the ISP assigns the customer.
> If customers bring their own stuff then you're stuck
Why? There is nothing preventing an ISP from saying that from date X, only protocols A, B and C are supported. If you want to use your own device, make sure it supports these protocols.
In other words, the requirement to allow customers to use their own devices does not mean that they can choose all available protocols. The allowed protocols can still be controlled by the ISPs.
You are at the end of the day still running a business.
It's like saying that Spotify could suddenly decide to retire support for Android 12 or something. They could, but how many customers are they going to lose and how much support burden is that going to generate?
I am unsure if the analogy you have offered is relevant here.
The major difference is that the ISPs in this particular case do not need to offer any support apart from listing standardized protocols which are supported. If someone brings in their own device, it is on them to set it up and make sure it works with the currently supported protocols.
Also, this business model is nothing new. For example, mobile network operators have been using it for decades. Their base calling services might remain working even on the oldest phones. But when it comes to data services, they are gradually upgrading. Many of them are switching off their 3G networks to free up frequencies, for instance. Millions of people are affected. And yet, there is no drama around it.
One of the reasons might be that these phase-outs are announced and planned very long time in advance so the customers have the time to prepare. And they have a choice. Either upgrade their phones or live without fast-ish data or switch carriers if possible. Which is fair, in my opinion.
It seems to me that the ISPs could use a similar approach and be just fine.
> Why? There is nothing preventing an ISP from saying that from date X, only protocols A, B and C are supported. If you want to use your own device, make sure it supports these protocols.
A lot of overhead for ISP support in those cases in which a customer knows they can buy any router with any ONT, plugs it and forgets it without zero knowledge of what a protocol even is.
In theory yes. In practice that might work that way if ~5% of your users are in that situation. If ~50% of your user base is running on a legacy protocol and you're running into Churn risks, the company is going to re-evaluate if they want to retire the old protocol.
There _is_ a reason even legacy cable TV and ancient DOCSIS channels are still being available in many countries because actually retiring a lot of old modems has shown to be risky to the business.
When I had CenturyLink, I replaced the ONT via a JTAG cable on the new ONT. The stock CL ONT (Calix 716GE-I R2) had a 16384 connection limit, which prevented me from running high-bandwidth Tor relays. The new ONT (Calix 803G) did not.
Calix for some reason makes it easy to clone some models.
Now I'm in NYC with Verizon Fios where I don't need a cloned ONT. Woo! The Verizon ONT is big and has a huge power brick, presumably because of RFoG alongside GPON.
That's very cool, but just to point out: that's not JTAG, it's serial (UART).
JTAG is a much lower level protocol, typically used for hardware or low-level software debugging. Serial/UART gives you a command-line interface to the software that's running.
Using a JTAG interface is a lot more complicated. If you're interested in playing with it, check out OpenOCD.
There is a mis-feature on the ONT called "Broadcom Packet Flow Cache". It apparently speeds up TCP sessions but at the expense of allowing a large amount of then.
Lumen fortunately moved off these ONTs. However, the new Smart NIDs have their fair share of issues from what I heard. I moved out of Lumen territory so have no experience with them.
If ISPS weren't cheapskate assholes, then they'd offer the ONT SFP module, so I didn't have some shitty plastic doodad hanging from my router because there's no place to put a mounting bracket for it and get it in the panel. I'm sure you'll tell me why the black bakelight rotary telephones were the only telephones I really needed, and I was just making trouble for little ole AT&T when I wanted something more.
That’s all great and wonderful, but I shouldn’t have to pay to rent a device that really only benefits the ISP. I would rather have a slick ONU SFP+ module in my router, than yet another plastic block on my telecom panel I need to find space and power for. “This makes our network easier to manage” AND “we make extra money doing this” is double-dipping.
You can actually run GPON and XGSPON simultaneously over the same PON segment as they use different wavelengths of light, so there is no reason to rip out all the GPON nodes at the same time. This allows deferring the truck roll and ONT costs until the customer upgrades to higher speeds.
With DOCSIS there is much more pressure to upgrade all CPE as any given chunk of RF spectrum can only run one version of DOCSIS. One 6MHz channel of RF spectrum on coax has a puny amount of bandwidth compared to a single lambda on fibre.
I’m counting myself lucky dealing with Bell Aliant who issue a router with an SFP stick. I’ve pulled it and stuck it into an Edgerouter X SFP. They do split their IPTV, VoIP and Internet networks onto various VLANs, but that’s about it. No weird authentication hacks like PPPoE either.
Some years ago there was only unofficial documentation even on the parts behind the ONT, like which VLAN carries internet and which one is IPTV etc. Now it's all officially documented and you can run your own modem, router and firewall if you want.
I've left their ONT in place and plugged it directly into a Linux box that does the rest. Gives me more flexibility on things like IPv6 and easier to host local services without port forwarding through their modem.
Do you know how this works contract wise? When you get network are you guaranteed that GPON will work or can they refuse service after a certain point in time and force you to upgrade to XGS-PON (or some other standard)?
The contract does not guarantee GPON or XGS-PON. They have a tool to help you figure out what you have, but they can legally change it when they're upgrading their network.
The only guarantee is that they'll give you a new provider owned ONT and router during the upgrade. But that's not very useful if you want to keep running your own equipment.
The provider can upgrade their network from GPON to XGS-PON; in fact KPN (a large Dutch provider) does this regularly, especially in areas with new housing developments.
> The provider can upgrade their network from GPON to XGS-PON
The provider can transparently run GPON and XGS-PON simultaniously because they run on different wavelengths. However unless the provider can tell all existing GPON customers to replace their infrastructure they cannot stop providing GPON. GPON -> XGS-PON is not an upgrade, it's double the infrastructure where the splitter is.
So my question is quite specifically if there is a contractual way for KPN to turn off GPON and force customers to migrate, or if they are required to service both until the last GPON customer goes away on a splitter.
This has been an issue with DOCSIS for in many places of the world where we are already running out of available frequency spectrum.
KPN and other Dutch ISPs don't really care about custom customer hardware, on a practical level and on a contractual level. The Dutch standard is that you use the rented hardware your ISP provides, unless you want something special, then you get specs and settings and you're on your own. Even if you use your own hardware, you often still get a modem delivered to your doorstep.
If anything breaks on the network side, the troubleshooting procedure is "connect the hardware we sent you and see if it works". If it does, it's up to you to fix your side. If that requires new hardware, you're kind of screwed. KPN has the obligation to permit you to run your own hardware and to provide you with the information necessary, but not to keep any kind of backwards compatibility.
(Euro)DOCSIS should be backwards compatible, but things like radio channels and unencrypted video signals have already been replaced by their digital equivalents to add more upstream capacity by Ziggo (the last remaining large Dutch cable company). This broke functionality for a whole bunch of devices, but these changes were announced months in advance so customers had to choose between ending their contract and taking it.
The trouble with dealing with KPN is that KPN is also the company operating the POPs in most places, with many other ISPs leasing their lines. So even if you switch to a different ISP in protest of the XGS-PON switch, you're very likely to still end up with a XGS-PON signal from KPN.
You're almost certain to end up with the exact same line just a different provider on it. Very few areas have multiple fiber networks, although it's getting more common.
I still believe that the original move, forcing KPN and other network owners to allow competitors on their network, was a better option than digging up the streets twice to get two fiber networks in place.
Consumer contracts don't guarantee GPON support in any way. So if KPN wants to upgrade they can just send the customer a letter telling them to get an XGS-PON compatible ONT by some date.
They'll probably take a bit more customer friendly approach and at least send you a free provider owned XGS-PON compatible one and a new modem. But for your own equipment you have to manage everything and make sure it complies with their published specifications.
That sounds like a somewhat pragmatic approach. Curious to see how that plays out in practice. I presume the total number of consumers that are interested in running their own ONT is limited. In Germany the situation seems a bit different. There customer owned Fritzbox devices with integrated ONTs are very widespread making the situation for an ISP quite different when it comes to upgrades.
Sure, but even with the fritzbox situation all ISPs also offer dedicated ONTs as free rental or for 40€ as purchase. Some, e.g. Telekom, also offer SFP ONTs (Digitalisierungsbox Glasfasermodem)
This can be a good stopgap, but the solution is to lobby for a law that mandates free ONT/modem/router choice.
We have such legislation in NL and the ISP is required to make it possible to use your own equipment.
Coincidentally, I had my ISP register my Fritz!Box Fiber 5590 as my ONT yesterday, so I have it directly hooked up to XGS-PON with their SFP+ module (no more Genexis ONT \o/).
I'm not on PON, but on DOCSIS cable, the advantage to using my own modem is:
1. When it breaks, I don't have to wait for weeks for the cable company to send someone to replace it. I just keep a spare on my shelf and can be back up in minutes.
2. Cost: buying my own pays for itself in 6 months.
3. Disintegration: This is more recent, but I've heard from neighbors that the cable company lately doesn't want to rent a modem, only an integrated WAP/router/modem.
Some customers might want a dedicated ONT, some might want an SFP+ module, some might want one integrated into their router.
Some ISPs only allow registering one ONT per account and don't allow changing ONT serial. With your own ONT you can have a hot spare available if one fails.
Some ISPs restrict access to ONT information, with your own ONT you can log connection quality data into grafana and setup alerts.
The ONT is directly accessible from the ISP's network, some ISPs haven't provided updates for their ONTs since 2016. With your own ONT, you can ensure you're always patched and secure.
I am so glad that here in Switzerland the government went after the large ISP that tried to install only P2MP instead of the decided on standard of P2P for fiber.
In my neighborhood (Netherlands) it appears the fiber network is physically point-to-point (subscriber to ODF), but is operated as XGS-GPON (so all subscribers see the same light signal so to say, but each over their own ptp fiber from the ODF). So point-multipoint only at the active layer.
I was told that this is because the company who is rolling out the fiber wants to make the network as attractive as possible to ISP’s who want to offer services over it (and wants them to compete) which may be more difficult in an actual physical point-multipoint network (which requires PON). The ISP currently likes PON more than AON (basically Ethernet over fiber to a switch) because the equipment is cheaper. In theory I should be able to switch to an ISP who offers AON or its own PON (they’d only have to physically patch my fiber in a different port at the ODF).
Even in Switzerland there were attempts of not building out AON. Swisscom was hoping they can get away with just having XGS-PON all the way to the customer and the other ISPs were also in favor of that (other than init7 which does not actually lay any fiber). The cost of P2P is pretty significant.
~CHF 65 more per connection is the cost difference that was calculated. For a de-facto future proof connection that should be considered insignificant.
Swisscom pissed away millions of tax payer money after the government ordered an injunction to stop building out on the P2MP network. All they did was continue but just not connect those lines hoping they would win the court cause.
Funny, I just got my own GPON-capable SFP (a Zyxel pmg3000-d20b) last week.
Finally got a fiber connection from Deutsche Telekom 2 months ago, after almost 5 years of waiting and a huge amount of fear and loathing. At one point, they threatened to cancel my order, claiming a certain subcontractor was unable to reach me. Of course that subcontractor had already done it's job months ago at that point. And this is just one of the many, many shenanigans that went on during those years.
At the moment, I'm using a Fritz!Box 5530 Fiber directly hooked up to the fiber with the AVM-supplied GPON interface. But I'm planning for the Zyxel SFP to go directly into my homelab server and route from there :)
It is my understanding that ISPs have management software that watches all the ONT activities. They will mark a rogue ONT as an “alien” and blacklist it.
not to mention that its probably jail time in the USA if they want to go after you. All they have to do is to show a judge that you "hacked" their device with some hacker "jtags" to extract the very well protected passwords.
People have in fact done prison time for "uncapping" DOCSIS CPE (although I believe only in situations where they were making a commercial operation out of it). I love seeing sites like this, but if I were involved, I'd tread lightly around commercialization, advertising, taking donations, etc.
Where I live, you can replace an ONT easily. GPON in my small country is only secured with the ONT serial number and a static well known password.
From a security perspective, that's perfectly fine. No one is going to hack their own neighbours or dig out fibre cables. From a usability and freedom of hardware choice, that's even better -- SN is written on the ONT and can be easily input into another ONT, unlike passwords and encryption keys that are largely unnecessary and only complicate things, providing little security because no one will hack GPON infrastructure.
You run into problems, however, if you are subscribed to telephony. It's possible that the ONT will handle VoIP for you and provide you just with a RJ11 jack. In that case, you can't easily swap your ONT. But for IPTV and Internet, it works out of the box.
I’m a bell customer in Canada and it used to be the case that the ISP provided modem had a CPU too slow to run PPPoE at a gigabit despite the ISP selling plans up to 1.5gb/s (it could only do 600mb/s or something but don’t quote me). That model has a sfp ont and so you could swap it into something else with no hacking but now you can only get the model with the ont built it. The new model is better hardware wise but just as bad software wise so it feels like a step back in practice.
I think selling users SFP ONTs is probably the right balance of ISP control vs allowing customer freedom
I can only pray this births a ddwrt equivalent for fiber ONTs.
I’m caretaking for my parents who are on ATT fiber with their giant scary black box ONT, and am consistently paranoid of what it is attempting or is doing on their network. This would be a great way to gain more transparency in its operation and possibly open useful features.
demarcation point
isp network | your network
---[fiber]---(ont)===[copper]===(router)===(wifi ap)
Now having laid out that nice neat little diagram, this is the real world
Things are messy, there is a real desire to consolidate boxes. If your network looks like below, My condolences, it sucks when you don't know where the demarcation point is. And I agree, In those cases it should probably be demarcated at the fiber line coming in.
Demarcation point
? ? ?
---[fiber]---(ont/router/ap)***[2.4GHz]***
> with their giant scary black box ONT, and am consistently paranoid of what it is attempting or is doing on their network
But is this different from network equipment deployed somewhere, where you don't see it? There are AON networks that are just a PON behind the scenes but you don't see that.
My ISP called me a while back and told me that they're decommissioning all copper infra, so it'd be better if I switch to fiber. I said OK.
They brought in a Nokia GPON ONT, and a new Zyxel router. I protested against the router, and I was ready to bypass it with bridge mode (whiich it allows), but with a reliable, powerful, and flexible WiFi6 router with better coverage than my WiFi5 one won over me, and I left it in service.
The thing is a beast with 4 different SSIDs plus a guest network, full gigabit ports and reliable operation. Plus it terminates my POTS line, too. It can handle the full 1000/50 mbps network without even getting warm, either.
So all in all, it's not a bad device overall, and I'm a happy camper.
GPON is the most commonly deployed FTTH technology and is not symmetric, though it should be much closer than a 20:1 down:up ratio, much closer to 2:1 IME.
Actually, the hardware symmetric capable, but they don't provide symmetric service (yet?).
I think the two reasons are market segmentation and preventing people from running services from their homes. 50mbps is enough uplink for what I do, and I don't care about providing services or self-hosting from home.
I have enough experience to run my services somewhere else on an isolated network and absorb the mayhem outside my home network.
I’m pretty sure that 95% of the positive responses to this thread are people that are conflating the two, and 4% are people overstating the utter importance of running your own ONT, conflating “it sounds fun for a select few mega-nerds and we should regulate for that” with “meaningful consumer choice”.
Yes. Several ISPs I've used sent out routers with integrated fiber connectors, no separate ONT. Their routers weren't terrible enough for me to want to replace them immediately, but not everybody gets a ONT+router combo from their ISP.
I think it's often more a "router with ONT built in" rather than an "ONT with router built in".
I have an XGS-PON ONT at home (an Adtran SDX 622v) to support the symmetric 8Gbps connection I have, but it's so basic that I can't really see what benefit there would be to replacing it or hacking it.
It just works, and I can plug my own router in to it.
I just want to say thank you! This is truly great work and could be an inflection point for fiber optic ISP consumers. Many people have been quietly seeking this solution for years, without finding a response. For those unfamiliar with what this means, take a moment to understand that many of these acronyms and technologies have been part of your fiber optic connection without you even realizing it.
I’d also like to mention that the ‘workaround’ for many was to use the pass-through option in their routers, but not all ISP-provided routers offered that feature!
The fat warning about optics make me realize a fibre optic cable can transmit light straight to the ISP's box (or can it?), and that it might be possible to shoot a laser to do some damage at the other end of a communication link, however little.
You could also connect a high voltage high current capable power supply to phone lines or coaxial cable and cause some damage. But it is immediately clear where it comes from!
GPON is one of those technologies that should have been drowned in the bath before the spec even made it out of its ITU committee. It's just yet another patch papering over how cheap the ISPs were and how they continue to be. Yes, let's add another layer on top of all of the other layers. Now however many millions of links out to subscribers are hamstrung with that decision to split the physical layer up and throw in nonsensical TDM into the mix as well. Good luck squeezing much out beyond 25g in the future, you're just gonna have to rip all of that fiber up anyway and do home runs. Might as well have done it up front with all of the billions that have been given away to the littly piggy piggy ISPs.
I made a comment a few days ago about how I despair when I see anything modern datacenter related. I get the same sort of revulsion when I look at the list of all of the gpon hardware on that page and thing: how much duplicated and wasted effort has gone in to making dozens of different models of the exact same thing. A thing that's not really even needed if a halfway-competent ISP made an investment that's more than the absolute minimum required.
Nice directory democratizing some good reverse engineering, though!
I'm no fan of PONs myself[1], but realistically they do still represent more than order of magnitude improvement over copper (or wireless shudder), while also proven to be very economical to deploy. Lets remember that perfect is the enemy of good, I'd much rather have PON with 90% household coverage than active fiber with 10% coverage.
Practically also with 50G PON already being standardized and 200G in the horizon it will take decades before the limitations will be relevant; with typical 1:32 split you get comfortably 1G service to subscribers. I do expect gigabit connectivity to be generously good for 99% of users for long time.
It is also noteworthy that while PON was originally standardized as asymmetric, it seems like ISPs have had a change of heart and are widely deploying symmetric PON (i.e. XGS-PON). I don't know what is driving that change (Twitch streamers and Youtubers? :D) but I'm happy about that.
You blame ITU for PON, but IEEE has been pushing EPON (ethernet-PON) for almost as long (GPON ratified 2003, EPON in 2004). Ultimately standards organizations are driven by industry, not the other way around. With the industry having some very big players in it, I have no doubt that PONs would have happened regardless of their standardization status.
While PON is shared medium which is conceptually yucky, in consumer world its impact is less because lines are massively oversubscribed anyways. It doesn't make much difference if you have PON or active fiber if the bottleneck is the uplink.
I don't like PON either, and I applaud your soapboxing about it, but IMO this overstates the extent of the impending 'rip it all out and replace it'. They can keep most if not all of the fiber runs, and just switch the PON muxes out for DWDM muxes when they need a home run link to each customer.
PON generally uses PLC splitters which are pretty much wavelength agnostic, so you don't even need to swap out the splitters in outside plant. It it entirely possible to overlay DWDM wavelengths on PON segments without even removing or changing any of the PON equipment, making it possible to do a customer by customer migration from PON to DWDM if desired. You do end up having to use 80 or 100km optics to compensate for the insertion loss of the splitter, but it's not like even 10Gbps DWDM optics are too expensive for that (they're on the order of $200 a piece). More important is the security concern as any customers on the PON segment would be able to snoop on traffic making use of MACSEC mandatory.
That said, it is unlikely that major telcos will deploy DWDM to the home outside of niche markets. The savings in feeder fibres costs are nice, but the bigger concern is that there is a very real cost to hosting enough ethernet switches to provide an ethernet port per customer. Most of the GPON deployments around where I live use 1:32 splits, but 1:128 is viable for residential subscribers at shorter distances and when using XGSPON or 10G-EPON (although I stick to 1:32 in my own network). With 48 ports in 1U of space a carrier can serve up to 1536 to 6144 customers in 1U with PON. That would be racks worth of equipment using 1:1 ethernet. DWDM-only would drive up operating costs for space, power, HVAC and equipment maintenance by orders of magnitude.
Yep, you could hack in some DWDM and scale with the capabilities of those endpoints, but at the end of the day it's still running over a shared medium. I don't think it's all impending doom and gloom, just a design decision that I think will not age well. It will be done eventually though I think.
> but at the end of the day it's still running over a shared medium
Everything is eventually a shared medium. You don't have your own fiber all the way to Facebook. So the question is just at which point do you share and that should be a decision made on throughput and cost.
Yeah, as long as your ISP link isn't the bottleneck then it doesn't really matter if they are not as fast as they could be. I'm running on the cheapest FIOS plan and I can count on one hand the number of services where it is the bottleneck. In fact I can only thing of one at the moment: Steam, and even then only sometimes. Even then the difference is downloading a game in 12 minutes instead of 10 minutes assuming it isn't release week on a big game and the servers are slow.
Some providers do what imo is a best of both worlds approach here: Every customer has a full fiber run to the PoP, but there they use GPON to save on the active components. The actual fiber is pretty cheap compared to actually bringing it into the ground and that way you retain full flexibility.
I didn’t really understand the criticism. PON is just fine. I have an XGPON ONT and previously there was a GPON ONT. Upgrading was just getting one from the ISP after they upgraded the splitter. GPON and XGSPON can live simultaneously.
I don’t think we will ever hit the limits of PON quite frankly and swapping out PONs for newer and better standards is rather trivial.
It's equivalent to an old POTS party line, just with some makeup covering its shambling corpse (read: ITU G-number) and a bit more razzle-dazzle after strapping on some lasers. We can do better!
I strongly disagree. On a party line information flows along the copper cable to every connected endpoint bidirectionally. While it's true that incoming information flows to all subscribers, never does information that flows out and you only get scrambled data even on the incoming stream. So if you're trying to make a security argument: the system is also safe on a physical level.
> We can do better!
Depends on what "better" is. I was quite critical of PON in the past but I have come around. Practically at this point I think PON is a better way to run networks in most places. At one point you hit a bottleneck anyways and not having to run individual fibers makes for a more resilient and cheaper system.
Yes, exactly like one of those old copper POTS party lines - remember how providers could easily supply a reliable symmetrical multi-gigabit service over those (like we can with XGS-PON) and how they theoretically could use DWDM to move hundreds of gigabits over them? No??
Fiber investment in The Netherlands from the big telcos is now fully based on XGS-PON. Many homes that already had fiber installed do have the technically superior AON (a dedicated fiber to the home), but it seems like investment in this infrastructure has stopped.
The current situation is one where XGS-PON users can get 5Gbps subscriptions, whereas AON users are stuck at 1Gbps - seemingly because the telcos aren’t upgrading their point-of-presence hardware to support anything beyond 1Gbps.
Do they actually bury PON components? Because around here they don’t. Fiber runs from homes to their concentrators and those house both the PON splitters and the OLTs. There’s some roadside boxes as well but afaik they’re only for splices, because those aren’t buried, either.
They've also started replacing AON with XGS-PON in some areas, by putting all the fiber combining/muxing devices you need for that inside the AON POP building (and sending out new devices etc.)
Even if you have AON you might have XGS-PON behind the scenes. In Switzerland end user fiber is AON more or less by regulation, but they just deploy the XGS-PON splitters in the COs.
For a while the maximum connection speed I could order was limited to 1 gbps. No XGS-PON here, the fiber rollout was 20 years ago in my neighbourhood so it's still the older standard. But interestingly they're now offering 4 gbps connections on the older standard as well.
I'm not sure how many home users order that, given the extra cost of 10g switches, NICs etc and then 90% of usage being via WiFi that only just makes it to 1 gbps. But it makes a lot of sense for businesses with multiple users sharing one connection.
> poor souls, though can we care about the low-end first?
What is the low end? Austria has a similar problem. There are some quite old and unmaintained AON networks where people are stuck with 100MBit whereas even G.Fast copper eclipses that in some cities at this point.
Sure, but it's pretty ironic if you are stuck on a 100MBit fiber connection and a few buildings down you get 300MBit over twisted pair. And the problem with AON losing support is that you often can't find an independent ISP that would actually give you service over that AON you have.
The low end doesn't have to deal with AON vs GPON. They get DSL or DOCSIS, or if they're unlucky dial-up.
And when the poor souls on slow internet do get upgraded, AON vs GPON suddenly decides if they can get upgraded to the new higher speeds in the next ten years or not. 1gbps may be relatively slow in 10 years, but with a widely spread GPON you're not getting much more out of that, while with AON entire neighbourhoods can be upgraded by replacing a single rack in the local POP.
> but with a widely spread GPON you're not getting much more out of that, while with AON entire neighbourhoods can be upgraded by replacing a single rack in the local POP
Except in a few places it has been exactly the other way round. AON networks in Austria for instance have been built a few years back, some random companies ended up owning that infrastructure and don't upgrade. On the other hand the incumbents have built fiber, have rolled out GPON and have in the meantime upgraded to XGS-PON whereas many on AON got stuck. It's slowly moving but very gradually.
Why is one fibre (actually you'd probably like 2 for upstream and downstream) to one customer the way to go? Even with >100 customers on a single fibre it should be possible to get everyone on 100 Gbit/s (although there are currently no standards for it). That will future proof for a long time.
I'm only just digging into the site, but some ONT pages (ex [1]) have information on how to set low-level parameters (MAC, various equipment IDs, etc). Probably won't get you free HBO, more likely to get your ONT banned at your ISP, but maybe you'll get free internet before that.
This isn't about getting free internet, no competent ISP will let the link come up without a serial number registered with the port. This is about bypassing the awful gateway hardware many fiber ISPs mandate.
There are also folks that want to overwrite the MAC, serial, etc to clone their ISPs ONT - allowing them to use a different GPON/XGSPON ONT/SFP(+) module [0].
The future needs at least one completely Open Source, Open Hardware ONT... ideally several...
A Google search at this point in time seems to fail to locate even one...
The next best thing (a step in that direction) might be open source firmware for existing proprietary ONT's, for which I found the following links for people who are apparently attempting getting something like that working:
"Has anyone tried making custom firmware for your ONT?":
BTW: in the EU there is movement towards mandating ISPs allow BYOD, including fibre ONTs.
https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/
I think it's vital that you can run your own modem but I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to force a custom ONT. An ONT is about as dumb as it gets and it's entirely transparent on the stack.
The benefit with an ONT (or even DOCSIS dumb modem) managed by the ISP is that they can do fleet upgrades much quicker as they don't have to keep all old protocols running. For instance the GPON -> XGSPON upgrade that some ISPs are running right now (or DOCSIS 3 upgrade) really only works well if you can turn off the old protocol which requires swapping out all ONTs/DOCSIS modems.
If customers bring their own stuff then you're stuck with these things for much longer.
In some places it sounds like the ONT is integrated with the router (like with DOCSIS), and being forced to use the ISP’s router is a problem.
But in cases where the ONT just looks like a media converter and you have a separate router I really can’t see any reason for the customer to provide their own ONT. Especially given PON is a shared medium so a misbehaving ONT can affect other customers.
> But in cases where the ONT just looks like a media converter and you have a separate router
That's how it works in New Zealand, but we take it a step further. The GPON/XGS-PON fibre network is run by a separate company[0] from the ISPs (and the company running the fibre network is prohibited from providing internet services[1]). So the ONT just functions as a media converter[2], and all our ISPs deliver internet over the same fibre network. This decoupling between the fibre network provider and ISP means you can change ISPs without any swapping of ONTs or repatching of fibre[3][4] (in fact, the process can be entirely automated, switching to some ISPs can take effect within an hour or two of placing the order). That and most ISPs allow bringing your own router (as there's no monopoly in the ISP space).
[0]: The NZ Government contracted four companies to build, own, and run fibre networks (three being new companies co-owned by local lines companies and the government to serving their local area, with the rest of the country being served by Chorus, the company that owns the country's copper network). These fibre companies are heavily regulated (including how much they can charge ISPs).
[1]: In fact, this requirement resulted in Telecom (the company that owned our copper network and who was one of the companies that provided phone and internet service to consumers) being split up, with Chorus being spun off, owning the copper network and owning the fibre network for the majority of the country.
[2]: Chorus did start deploying ONTs with a built-in router/AP a while back. They did offer this to ISPs to use, but uptake was very low, so it's since been discontinued.
[3]: I don't know how it works over in European countries where ISPs run their own fibre networks when switching ISPs, I assume they have to either install their own fibre line into the premises or the existing fibre is repatched to their network?
[4]: The fibre companies are required to offer use of their fibre network directly to ISPs, with the ISPs PON network running in parallel to the fibre company's, with the ISP providing their own fibre splitters and ONTs (which would be run on a second fibre line that each premises already has) and running their own OLTs. I believe this requirement still exists, but no-one ever took them up on it.
About [3]. In Switzerland most of the fiber network is built by Swisscom, a former telecom monopoly and still 51% state owned company that also owns the old copper network. Other ISPs can use the network but everyone has their own router with an integrated ONT. ONTs as a separate device are pretty much unknown. On XGS-PON only certified ONTs are whitelisted [0] The wholesale price list is public [1] For actuall prices see [2] They differentiate mostly through support, price and additional services like TV. Data caps are basically unheard of (I don't call something like the fiber7 FUP of 600TB a data cap) and CGNAT is, while not uncommon, at most a phone call to disable it.
[0] https://www.swisscom.ch/dam/swisscom/en/ws/documents/E_BBCS-...
[1] https://www.swisscom.ch/content/dam/swisscom/de/ws/documents...
[2] https://en.comparis.ch/telecom/zuhause/angebote/internet-abo
I am curious about this model. How well is this working in practice? How many ISPs do you have to choose from, and how do they differentiate? How close to wholesale are the retail prices?
I believe the number of ISPs differs regionally (I suspect due to where they have network equipment), but I just put in my adress into the main search website (https://www.broadbandcompare.co.nz) and it came back with 13+ ISPs (although some of them might belong to same parent companies). Prices tend to be quite similar (which I suspect indicates that it is operating close to cost) and differentiation happens mainly on bundling with other services (mobile, power, TV, included Netflix...) Keep in mind that I have only lived here for 1.5 years, but from my limited experience it definitely seems like there is a healthy amount of competition.
Chorus does let ISPs handover in just a single or a couple of points to provide service nationwide (well, for the areas they serve), instead of needing to do it at all 27 handover locations. I imagine it's possible to interconnect with the other fibre companies over a backhaul connection as well. So smaller ISPs can definitely offer service nationwide without having to put networking equipment all over the country.
My understanding is that the margins on fibre connections for ISPs are quite slim. The three big telcos do both broadband and cellular, and they definitely try and push customers with lighter needs over to wireless internet delivered over 4G or 5G (which has more margins for them). There has been a bit of consolidation among the major players (one of the big telcos (2Degrees, who do both broadband and cellular) merged with one of the big broadband-only telcos (Vocus) a couple of years ago). But there's plenty of smaller ISPs. And a couple of the electricity retailers have gotten in on providing internet as well. And it's not uncommon for local WISPs to offer fibre as well.
Differentiation between ISPs is definitely mainly on cost, quality of support, and bundled services. They all have their own networks (the fibre companies only provide L2 connectivity from the customers to the ISPs), and there can be some differences there. For example, another of the big broadband+cellular telcos (Spark, who was the ISP side of Telecom before they were split up) is the only major ISP that doesn't offer IPv6 and doesn't peer at local peering exchanges.
Some ISPs have cheaper plans with data caps, but many ISPs don't even offer data-capped plans, and everyone offers uncapped plans. Similarly, most ISPs let you use your own router. And about the only variation in how you'd need to configure your router is PPPoE vs IPoE/DHCP and VLAN 10 vs untagged. So you can usually switch ISPs and all you need to do is maybe change your router config.
As a side note, of particular interest to the audience here is the existence of a new-ish residential ISP (Quic) that offers things like static IP for a one-off cost, /28 IPv4 subnets, self-service rDNS management, and self-service access to the ONT status, connection logs, etc. One of the advantages of having competition in the ISP space.
Cool, one similiar network in the US is UTOPIA in Utah... they seem to have similiar results. https://www.utopiafiber.com/residential-pricing/
But I have read that some other communities that have tried the same model have had trouble attracting ISPs.
The UK does the same thing. openreach own the infra and sell the transit wholesale to providers. It works really well on the whole.
It seems to be working quite well in terms of ISP choice (see my reply to cycomanic). And Chorus is offering up to 8 Gbps connections over XGS-PON, with most of the other fibre companies either also offering XGS-PON or working to offer it.
I suppose there are a couple of downsides compared to being able to use your own ONT, in that residential customers can't get SPF ONTs, and Chorus's XGS-PON ONT is quite large and not wall-mountable, which has caused a few people to hold out on XGS-PON offerings (they're working to offer a smaller one, but it got set back a bit, and they also won't start offering it until they run out of the old XGS-PON ONTs). But that's all quite minor (a residential customer wanting an SPF ONT is very niche indeed, as is a genuine need for a residential XGS-PON connection).
> In some places it sounds like the ONT is integrated with the router (like with DOCSIS), and being forced to use the ISP’s router is a problem.
I agree, and that is a problem. The rules and regulations are different in different countries. In Austria for instance the ISP can force you to use a specific DOCSIS modem or ONT but they have to provide you with a transparent way to connect to it (bridge mode etc.). Which from where I'm standing is a good tradeoff because it gives the ISP the flexibility to do mass migrations without having to consider very old deployed infrastructure.
With PON I think it doesn't matter all _that_ much but for instance people running ancient DOCSIS modems and limited frequency availability has been a massive pain for people stuck with DOCSIS infrastructure that want more upstream and can't.
This is the same in Spain: ISP-provided ont/router combos are fine but they must have a bridge mode (you may have to call support to enable it).
So at least in Portugal, my ISP gives me their device, it has a bridge mode, but it also serves as their wifi access point network (think Xfinity wifi) -- which I don't object to except that their wifi can't be disabled and their signal interferes with my wifi access points.
I want a dumb gpon sfp not because they won't give me a bridge, but because their bridge makes too much noise.
I have to wonder, why can't their wi-fi be disabled? Is it one of those scenarios where it is being used to support other ISP customers in your area?
My ISP (note: also owned by my employer) doesn't have this, so the modem I've got is theirs, but I can disable wi-fi. I do, too, so the only client on this thing is my firewall. I assume that everything past my firewall could potentially be hostile.
>but they have to provide you with a transparent way to connect to it
Can you provide the source for that? Because the Wifi 6 enabled Modem from Magenta doesn't support bridge mode.
> Can you provide the source for that?
There has not been an official ruling, but that was not necessary because there is a soft commitment by ISPs to provide bridge mode which was enough for the RTR: https://www.rtr.at/TKP/was_wir_tun/telekommunikation/konsume...
But they are very explicit:
> Gleichzeitig gibt es eine gesetzlich garantierte Endgerätefreiheit (Art. 3 Abs. 1 TSM-VO). Auf Grund dieser haben alle Nutzer:innen das Recht, einen Router ihrer Wahl zu verwenden. Stellt der Anbieter einen Router mit integriertem Modem zur Verfügung, muss es möglich sein, diesen Router in den sogenannten "Brigde-Modus" zu schalten.
> Because the Wifi 6 enabled Modem from Magenta doesn't support bridge mode.
It does. Call customer support and they enable it for you. It turns into a dumb modem afterwards behind which you need to put your own infrastructure.
It's also mentioned on their FAQ: https://www.magenta.at/faq/entry/~technische-anfrage~kabelin...
I replaced my Google fiber ONT by cloning the network parameters into a cheap SFP one because the Google supplied one only supports gigabit Ethernet but uses 2.5/1.25gbit optics. The upgrade reduced latency a small, but measurable amount, and improved my NTP jitter.
In theory the ONT can act like a listening device. They're also often Linux or BSD devices that can get hacked.
If you're paranoid, you may want to run an ONT that you control, just in case. I doubt it's something that matters to a lot of people, but even if it only matters to some, it shouldn't be made impossible for those that want to.
RE: misbehaving hardware: the same is very much true for cable internet and there are plenty of countries where people hook up their own modem without any trouble. If someone wanted to mess with the fiber network they could just disconnect the ONT and shine a laser pointer down there. All off-the-shelf devices are built to just work and follow the necessary standards, because there's nothing to be gained by messing with the PON network like that.
> In theory the ONT can act like a listening device
Sure, but so can the other endpoint. Even many AON installations these days are just hidden XPS-PON and similar, you just never see the ONT. (See a lot of ISPs in Switzerland)
And so can all the other endpoints if they're not encrypting downstream traffic
In the year 2024 it is prudent to think of everything that leaves the premises as potentially listened upon.
That's why we've got HTTPS an DoT/DoH so widespread these days
There’s still a huge privacy impact if anyone can listen to your traffic (since hostnames are almost always plaintext due to SNI).
Definitely agree. The smart place to demarcate the connection is the point at which a device does DHCP/SLAAC to get whatever IPs the ISP assigns the customer.
as long as the ISP isn't charging a rental fee for the ONT.
> If customers bring their own stuff then you're stuck
Why? There is nothing preventing an ISP from saying that from date X, only protocols A, B and C are supported. If you want to use your own device, make sure it supports these protocols.
In other words, the requirement to allow customers to use their own devices does not mean that they can choose all available protocols. The allowed protocols can still be controlled by the ISPs.
You are at the end of the day still running a business.
It's like saying that Spotify could suddenly decide to retire support for Android 12 or something. They could, but how many customers are they going to lose and how much support burden is that going to generate?
I am unsure if the analogy you have offered is relevant here.
The major difference is that the ISPs in this particular case do not need to offer any support apart from listing standardized protocols which are supported. If someone brings in their own device, it is on them to set it up and make sure it works with the currently supported protocols.
Also, this business model is nothing new. For example, mobile network operators have been using it for decades. Their base calling services might remain working even on the oldest phones. But when it comes to data services, they are gradually upgrading. Many of them are switching off their 3G networks to free up frequencies, for instance. Millions of people are affected. And yet, there is no drama around it.
One of the reasons might be that these phase-outs are announced and planned very long time in advance so the customers have the time to prepare. And they have a choice. Either upgrade their phones or live without fast-ish data or switch carriers if possible. Which is fair, in my opinion.
It seems to me that the ISPs could use a similar approach and be just fine.
> Why? There is nothing preventing an ISP from saying that from date X, only protocols A, B and C are supported. If you want to use your own device, make sure it supports these protocols.
A lot of overhead for ISP support in those cases in which a customer knows they can buy any router with any ONT, plugs it and forgets it without zero knowledge of what a protocol even is.
Hahahaha! Have you ever done any customer support!? This is not how it works.
Well this is about allowing customer supplied ONT, not supporting them. As in, you have to follow upgrade procedures announced X days in advance, etc.
In theory yes. In practice that might work that way if ~5% of your users are in that situation. If ~50% of your user base is running on a legacy protocol and you're running into Churn risks, the company is going to re-evaluate if they want to retire the old protocol.
There _is_ a reason even legacy cable TV and ancient DOCSIS channels are still being available in many countries because actually retiring a lot of old modems has shown to be risky to the business.
[flagged]
I mean you're right in general- but we're talking about a subset of customers that want to mess with their own fiber connection.
That's either a horde that understands the issue, or is an even smaller subset that is going to be a pita anyway.
When I had CenturyLink, I replaced the ONT via a JTAG cable on the new ONT. The stock CL ONT (Calix 716GE-I R2) had a 16384 connection limit, which prevented me from running high-bandwidth Tor relays. The new ONT (Calix 803G) did not.
Calix for some reason makes it easy to clone some models.
I have a post on this: https://www.neelc.org/posts/clone-calix-ont/
Now I'm in NYC with Verizon Fios where I don't need a cloned ONT. Woo! The Verizon ONT is big and has a huge power brick, presumably because of RFoG alongside GPON.
That's very cool, but just to point out: that's not JTAG, it's serial (UART).
JTAG is a much lower level protocol, typically used for hardware or low-level software debugging. Serial/UART gives you a command-line interface to the software that's running.
Using a JTAG interface is a lot more complicated. If you're interested in playing with it, check out OpenOCD.
How is the ONT, a Layer2/Ethernet device, involved in L3 sessions? Was it also the default gateway/router all rolled up into one?
There is a mis-feature on the ONT called "Broadcom Packet Flow Cache". It apparently speeds up TCP sessions but at the expense of allowing a large amount of then.
Lumen fortunately moved off these ONTs. However, the new Smart NIDs have their fair share of issues from what I heard. I moved out of Lumen territory so have no experience with them.
Consumer routers are all extremely limited when it comes to many connections. Even an Ubiquiti UDM Pro only allows 65536 by default.
If ISPS weren't cheapskate assholes, then they'd offer the ONT SFP module, so I didn't have some shitty plastic doodad hanging from my router because there's no place to put a mounting bracket for it and get it in the panel. I'm sure you'll tell me why the black bakelight rotary telephones were the only telephones I really needed, and I was just making trouble for little ole AT&T when I wanted something more.
That’s all great and wonderful, but I shouldn’t have to pay to rent a device that really only benefits the ISP. I would rather have a slick ONU SFP+ module in my router, than yet another plastic block on my telecom panel I need to find space and power for. “This makes our network easier to manage” AND “we make extra money doing this” is double-dipping.
You can actually run GPON and XGSPON simultaneously over the same PON segment as they use different wavelengths of light, so there is no reason to rip out all the GPON nodes at the same time. This allows deferring the truck roll and ONT costs until the customer upgrades to higher speeds.
With DOCSIS there is much more pressure to upgrade all CPE as any given chunk of RF spectrum can only run one version of DOCSIS. One 6MHz channel of RF spectrum on coax has a puny amount of bandwidth compared to a single lambda on fibre.
> I think it's vital that you can run your own modem but I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to force a custom ONT.
Did you mean "router" instead of "modem" here?
I’m counting myself lucky dealing with Bell Aliant who issue a router with an SFP stick. I’ve pulled it and stuck it into an Edgerouter X SFP. They do split their IPTV, VoIP and Internet networks onto various VLANs, but that’s about it. No weird authentication hacks like PPPoE either.
Just MAC authentication and go..
Mandatory in the Netherlands, since last year.
And as a result for example KPN (one of the largest fiber ISPs) has a document to tell you what to connect and with which specs: https://assets.ctfassets.net/zuadwp3l2xby/2Yp0HtLJPKBUX5mqr3...
Some years ago there was only unofficial documentation even on the parts behind the ONT, like which VLAN carries internet and which one is IPTV etc. Now it's all officially documented and you can run your own modem, router and firewall if you want.
I've left their ONT in place and plugged it directly into a Linux box that does the rest. Gives me more flexibility on things like IPv6 and easier to host local services without port forwarding through their modem.
Do you know how this works contract wise? When you get network are you guaranteed that GPON will work or can they refuse service after a certain point in time and force you to upgrade to XGS-PON (or some other standard)?
The contract does not guarantee GPON or XGS-PON. They have a tool to help you figure out what you have, but they can legally change it when they're upgrading their network.
The only guarantee is that they'll give you a new provider owned ONT and router during the upgrade. But that's not very useful if you want to keep running your own equipment.
The provider can upgrade their network from GPON to XGS-PON; in fact KPN (a large Dutch provider) does this regularly, especially in areas with new housing developments.
> The provider can upgrade their network from GPON to XGS-PON
The provider can transparently run GPON and XGS-PON simultaniously because they run on different wavelengths. However unless the provider can tell all existing GPON customers to replace their infrastructure they cannot stop providing GPON. GPON -> XGS-PON is not an upgrade, it's double the infrastructure where the splitter is.
So my question is quite specifically if there is a contractual way for KPN to turn off GPON and force customers to migrate, or if they are required to service both until the last GPON customer goes away on a splitter.
This has been an issue with DOCSIS for in many places of the world where we are already running out of available frequency spectrum.
KPN and other Dutch ISPs don't really care about custom customer hardware, on a practical level and on a contractual level. The Dutch standard is that you use the rented hardware your ISP provides, unless you want something special, then you get specs and settings and you're on your own. Even if you use your own hardware, you often still get a modem delivered to your doorstep.
If anything breaks on the network side, the troubleshooting procedure is "connect the hardware we sent you and see if it works". If it does, it's up to you to fix your side. If that requires new hardware, you're kind of screwed. KPN has the obligation to permit you to run your own hardware and to provide you with the information necessary, but not to keep any kind of backwards compatibility.
(Euro)DOCSIS should be backwards compatible, but things like radio channels and unencrypted video signals have already been replaced by their digital equivalents to add more upstream capacity by Ziggo (the last remaining large Dutch cable company). This broke functionality for a whole bunch of devices, but these changes were announced months in advance so customers had to choose between ending their contract and taking it.
The trouble with dealing with KPN is that KPN is also the company operating the POPs in most places, with many other ISPs leasing their lines. So even if you switch to a different ISP in protest of the XGS-PON switch, you're very likely to still end up with a XGS-PON signal from KPN.
You're almost certain to end up with the exact same line just a different provider on it. Very few areas have multiple fiber networks, although it's getting more common.
I still believe that the original move, forcing KPN and other network owners to allow competitors on their network, was a better option than digging up the streets twice to get two fiber networks in place.
Consumer contracts don't guarantee GPON support in any way. So if KPN wants to upgrade they can just send the customer a letter telling them to get an XGS-PON compatible ONT by some date.
They'll probably take a bit more customer friendly approach and at least send you a free provider owned XGS-PON compatible one and a new modem. But for your own equipment you have to manage everything and make sure it complies with their published specifications.
That sounds like a somewhat pragmatic approach. Curious to see how that plays out in practice. I presume the total number of consumers that are interested in running their own ONT is limited. In Germany the situation seems a bit different. There customer owned Fritzbox devices with integrated ONTs are very widespread making the situation for an ISP quite different when it comes to upgrades.
Sure, but even with the fritzbox situation all ISPs also offer dedicated ONTs as free rental or for 40€ as purchase. Some, e.g. Telekom, also offer SFP ONTs (Digitalisierungsbox Glasfasermodem)
Not more infra at the splitter; they are simple optical devices which use no electricity (hence the P in PON).
More infra at the OLT end, yes.
Sorry yes, you are correct.
Google translated to English: https://static.r2kba.net/file/Sharex--Uploads/ShareX/2024/09...
This has been the case in Italy since 2018, but I'm OK with ISP-provided ONTs to be honest, as long as I can use my own router.
The problem here is that the ISP will try to avoid giving any kind of support (even when the problem is on _their_ side) if you opt into BYOD.
Yeah, I'd love this. My HALNY ONT doesn't support hairpin NAT which complicates accessing stuff exposed outside from home.
This can be a good stopgap, but the solution is to lobby for a law that mandates free ONT/modem/router choice.
We have such legislation in NL and the ISP is required to make it possible to use your own equipment.
Coincidentally, I had my ISP register my Fritz!Box Fiber 5590 as my ONT yesterday, so I have it directly hooked up to XGS-PON with their SFP+ module (no more Genexis ONT \o/).
Why? Is there an advantage to using your own ONT? Is it just a personal freedom thing or are there features you can unlock?
I'm not on PON, but on DOCSIS cable, the advantage to using my own modem is:
1. When it breaks, I don't have to wait for weeks for the cable company to send someone to replace it. I just keep a spare on my shelf and can be back up in minutes.
2. Cost: buying my own pays for itself in 6 months.
3. Disintegration: This is more recent, but I've heard from neighbors that the cable company lately doesn't want to rent a modem, only an integrated WAP/router/modem.
Does your ISP require you to register the MAC address of the HFC interface of your spare modem?
I can enter it online (via my cell internet obviously), or call in and tell it to a CS rep.
> Is there an advantage to using your own ONT
Some customers might want a dedicated ONT, some might want an SFP+ module, some might want one integrated into their router.
Some ISPs only allow registering one ONT per account and don't allow changing ONT serial. With your own ONT you can have a hot spare available if one fails.
Some ISPs restrict access to ONT information, with your own ONT you can log connection quality data into grafana and setup alerts.
The ONT is directly accessible from the ISP's network, some ISPs haven't provided updates for their ONTs since 2016. With your own ONT, you can ensure you're always patched and secure.
> I had my ISP register my Fritz!Box Fiber 5590 as my ONT yesterday
what did registration entail and how long did it take?
Also NL here, my provider has a self service online form for it. Takes only a few minutes.
I am so glad that here in Switzerland the government went after the large ISP that tried to install only P2MP instead of the decided on standard of P2P for fiber.
https://blog.init7.net/en/die-glasfaserstreit-geschichte/
In my neighborhood (Netherlands) it appears the fiber network is physically point-to-point (subscriber to ODF), but is operated as XGS-GPON (so all subscribers see the same light signal so to say, but each over their own ptp fiber from the ODF). So point-multipoint only at the active layer.
I was told that this is because the company who is rolling out the fiber wants to make the network as attractive as possible to ISP’s who want to offer services over it (and wants them to compete) which may be more difficult in an actual physical point-multipoint network (which requires PON). The ISP currently likes PON more than AON (basically Ethernet over fiber to a switch) because the equipment is cheaper. In theory I should be able to switch to an ISP who offers AON or its own PON (they’d only have to physically patch my fiber in a different port at the ODF).
Even in Switzerland there were attempts of not building out AON. Swisscom was hoping they can get away with just having XGS-PON all the way to the customer and the other ISPs were also in favor of that (other than init7 which does not actually lay any fiber). The cost of P2P is pretty significant.
~CHF 65 more per connection is the cost difference that was calculated. For a de-facto future proof connection that should be considered insignificant.
Swisscom pissed away millions of tax payer money after the government ordered an injunction to stop building out on the P2MP network. All they did was continue but just not connect those lines hoping they would win the court cause.
Funny, I just got my own GPON-capable SFP (a Zyxel pmg3000-d20b) last week.
Finally got a fiber connection from Deutsche Telekom 2 months ago, after almost 5 years of waiting and a huge amount of fear and loathing. At one point, they threatened to cancel my order, claiming a certain subcontractor was unable to reach me. Of course that subcontractor had already done it's job months ago at that point. And this is just one of the many, many shenanigans that went on during those years.
At the moment, I'm using a Fritz!Box 5530 Fiber directly hooked up to the fiber with the AVM-supplied GPON interface. But I'm planning for the Zyxel SFP to go directly into my homelab server and route from there :)
Make sure to check which firmware version the module you got is using.
The module I ordered last year still uses an old firmware from 2020 which has telnet access available.
The module I ordered a few weeks ago uses a new firmware with no telnet access, which also means no way to set the serial number anymore.
I haven't yet checked whether it's still possible to access the interface via uart.
It is my understanding that ISPs have management software that watches all the ONT activities. They will mark a rogue ONT as an “alien” and blacklist it.
not to mention that its probably jail time in the USA if they want to go after you. All they have to do is to show a judge that you "hacked" their device with some hacker "jtags" to extract the very well protected passwords.
People have in fact done prison time for "uncapping" DOCSIS CPE (although I believe only in situations where they were making a commercial operation out of it). I love seeing sites like this, but if I were involved, I'd tread lightly around commercialization, advertising, taking donations, etc.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/oregon-man-sentenced-boston-3...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/01/hacking-cable-mo...
I assume that is why they have a page full of disclaimers before you get to any content.
jailtime for a mouthful of internet is somewhat of a stretch
Yes. Exactly.
Where I live, you can replace an ONT easily. GPON in my small country is only secured with the ONT serial number and a static well known password.
From a security perspective, that's perfectly fine. No one is going to hack their own neighbours or dig out fibre cables. From a usability and freedom of hardware choice, that's even better -- SN is written on the ONT and can be easily input into another ONT, unlike passwords and encryption keys that are largely unnecessary and only complicate things, providing little security because no one will hack GPON infrastructure.
You run into problems, however, if you are subscribed to telephony. It's possible that the ONT will handle VoIP for you and provide you just with a RJ11 jack. In that case, you can't easily swap your ONT. But for IPTV and Internet, it works out of the box.
I’m a bell customer in Canada and it used to be the case that the ISP provided modem had a CPU too slow to run PPPoE at a gigabit despite the ISP selling plans up to 1.5gb/s (it could only do 600mb/s or something but don’t quote me). That model has a sfp ont and so you could swap it into something else with no hacking but now you can only get the model with the ont built it. The new model is better hardware wise but just as bad software wise so it feels like a step back in practice.
I think selling users SFP ONTs is probably the right balance of ISP control vs allowing customer freedom
I can only pray this births a ddwrt equivalent for fiber ONTs.
I’m caretaking for my parents who are on ATT fiber with their giant scary black box ONT, and am consistently paranoid of what it is attempting or is doing on their network. This would be a great way to gain more transparency in its operation and possibly open useful features.
The ont should not be on their network.
The normal state of affairs is
Now having laid out that nice neat little diagram, this is the real world Things are messy, there is a real desire to consolidate boxes. If your network looks like below, My condolences, it sucks when you don't know where the demarcation point is. And I agree, In those cases it should probably be demarcated at the fiber line coming in.> with their giant scary black box ONT, and am consistently paranoid of what it is attempting or is doing on their network
But is this different from network equipment deployed somewhere, where you don't see it? There are AON networks that are just a PON behind the scenes but you don't see that.
My ISP called me a while back and told me that they're decommissioning all copper infra, so it'd be better if I switch to fiber. I said OK.
They brought in a Nokia GPON ONT, and a new Zyxel router. I protested against the router, and I was ready to bypass it with bridge mode (whiich it allows), but with a reliable, powerful, and flexible WiFi6 router with better coverage than my WiFi5 one won over me, and I left it in service.
The thing is a beast with 4 different SSIDs plus a guest network, full gigabit ports and reliable operation. Plus it terminates my POTS line, too. It can handle the full 1000/50 mbps network without even getting warm, either.
So all in all, it's not a bad device overall, and I'm a happy camper.
> It can handle the full 1000/50 mbps network
Your fiber is asymmetrical (not 1g/1g) - like low-latency cable?
GPON is the most commonly deployed FTTH technology and is not symmetric, though it should be much closer than a 20:1 down:up ratio, much closer to 2:1 IME.
Actually, the hardware symmetric capable, but they don't provide symmetric service (yet?).
I think the two reasons are market segmentation and preventing people from running services from their homes. 50mbps is enough uplink for what I do, and I don't care about providing services or self-hosting from home.
I have enough experience to run my services somewhere else on an isolated network and absorb the mayhem outside my home network.
Being forced to used an ISPs fiber router can be frustrating, I hope we can get regulations to force BYO
Are some ONTs routers? Mine (Calix GigaPoint GP1100X) is not.
I’m pretty sure that 95% of the positive responses to this thread are people that are conflating the two, and 4% are people overstating the utter importance of running your own ONT, conflating “it sounds fun for a select few mega-nerds and we should regulate for that” with “meaningful consumer choice”.
Yes. Several ISPs I've used sent out routers with integrated fiber connectors, no separate ONT. Their routers weren't terrible enough for me to want to replace them immediately, but not everybody gets a ONT+router combo from their ISP.
I think it's often more a "router with ONT built in" rather than an "ONT with router built in".
I have an XGS-PON ONT at home (an Adtran SDX 622v) to support the symmetric 8Gbps connection I have, but it's so basic that I can't really see what benefit there would be to replacing it or hacking it.
It just works, and I can plug my own router in to it.
I just want to say thank you! This is truly great work and could be an inflection point for fiber optic ISP consumers. Many people have been quietly seeking this solution for years, without finding a response. For those unfamiliar with what this means, take a moment to understand that many of these acronyms and technologies have been part of your fiber optic connection without you even realizing it.
I’d also like to mention that the ‘workaround’ for many was to use the pass-through option in their routers, but not all ISP-provided routers offered that feature!
The fat warning about optics make me realize a fibre optic cable can transmit light straight to the ISP's box (or can it?), and that it might be possible to shoot a laser to do some damage at the other end of a communication link, however little.
That makes me think of this Danger 5 scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDhrjKZprOo
You could also connect a high voltage high current capable power supply to phone lines or coaxial cable and cause some damage. But it is immediately clear where it comes from!
I wonder how ISPs would react to this. They're usually not thrilled about customers messing with their gear.
GPON is one of those technologies that should have been drowned in the bath before the spec even made it out of its ITU committee. It's just yet another patch papering over how cheap the ISPs were and how they continue to be. Yes, let's add another layer on top of all of the other layers. Now however many millions of links out to subscribers are hamstrung with that decision to split the physical layer up and throw in nonsensical TDM into the mix as well. Good luck squeezing much out beyond 25g in the future, you're just gonna have to rip all of that fiber up anyway and do home runs. Might as well have done it up front with all of the billions that have been given away to the littly piggy piggy ISPs.
I made a comment a few days ago about how I despair when I see anything modern datacenter related. I get the same sort of revulsion when I look at the list of all of the gpon hardware on that page and thing: how much duplicated and wasted effort has gone in to making dozens of different models of the exact same thing. A thing that's not really even needed if a halfway-competent ISP made an investment that's more than the absolute minimum required.
Nice directory democratizing some good reverse engineering, though!
</end soapbox>
I'm no fan of PONs myself[1], but realistically they do still represent more than order of magnitude improvement over copper (or wireless shudder), while also proven to be very economical to deploy. Lets remember that perfect is the enemy of good, I'd much rather have PON with 90% household coverage than active fiber with 10% coverage.
Practically also with 50G PON already being standardized and 200G in the horizon it will take decades before the limitations will be relevant; with typical 1:32 split you get comfortably 1G service to subscribers. I do expect gigabit connectivity to be generously good for 99% of users for long time.
It is also noteworthy that while PON was originally standardized as asymmetric, it seems like ISPs have had a change of heart and are widely deploying symmetric PON (i.e. XGS-PON). I don't know what is driving that change (Twitch streamers and Youtubers? :D) but I'm happy about that.
You blame ITU for PON, but IEEE has been pushing EPON (ethernet-PON) for almost as long (GPON ratified 2003, EPON in 2004). Ultimately standards organizations are driven by industry, not the other way around. With the industry having some very big players in it, I have no doubt that PONs would have happened regardless of their standardization status.
While PON is shared medium which is conceptually yucky, in consumer world its impact is less because lines are massively oversubscribed anyways. It doesn't make much difference if you have PON or active fiber if the bottleneck is the uplink.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41634415
I don't like PON either, and I applaud your soapboxing about it, but IMO this overstates the extent of the impending 'rip it all out and replace it'. They can keep most if not all of the fiber runs, and just switch the PON muxes out for DWDM muxes when they need a home run link to each customer.
PON generally uses PLC splitters which are pretty much wavelength agnostic, so you don't even need to swap out the splitters in outside plant. It it entirely possible to overlay DWDM wavelengths on PON segments without even removing or changing any of the PON equipment, making it possible to do a customer by customer migration from PON to DWDM if desired. You do end up having to use 80 or 100km optics to compensate for the insertion loss of the splitter, but it's not like even 10Gbps DWDM optics are too expensive for that (they're on the order of $200 a piece). More important is the security concern as any customers on the PON segment would be able to snoop on traffic making use of MACSEC mandatory.
That said, it is unlikely that major telcos will deploy DWDM to the home outside of niche markets. The savings in feeder fibres costs are nice, but the bigger concern is that there is a very real cost to hosting enough ethernet switches to provide an ethernet port per customer. Most of the GPON deployments around where I live use 1:32 splits, but 1:128 is viable for residential subscribers at shorter distances and when using XGSPON or 10G-EPON (although I stick to 1:32 in my own network). With 48 ports in 1U of space a carrier can serve up to 1536 to 6144 customers in 1U with PON. That would be racks worth of equipment using 1:1 ethernet. DWDM-only would drive up operating costs for space, power, HVAC and equipment maintenance by orders of magnitude.
Yep, you could hack in some DWDM and scale with the capabilities of those endpoints, but at the end of the day it's still running over a shared medium. I don't think it's all impending doom and gloom, just a design decision that I think will not age well. It will be done eventually though I think.
> but at the end of the day it's still running over a shared medium
Everything is eventually a shared medium. You don't have your own fiber all the way to Facebook. So the question is just at which point do you share and that should be a decision made on throughput and cost.
Yeah, as long as your ISP link isn't the bottleneck then it doesn't really matter if they are not as fast as they could be. I'm running on the cheapest FIOS plan and I can count on one hand the number of services where it is the bottleneck. In fact I can only thing of one at the moment: Steam, and even then only sometimes. Even then the difference is downloading a game in 12 minutes instead of 10 minutes assuming it isn't release week on a big game and the servers are slow.
Some providers do what imo is a best of both worlds approach here: Every customer has a full fiber run to the PoP, but there they use GPON to save on the active components. The actual fiber is pretty cheap compared to actually bringing it into the ground and that way you retain full flexibility.
I didn’t really understand the criticism. PON is just fine. I have an XGPON ONT and previously there was a GPON ONT. Upgrading was just getting one from the ISP after they upgraded the splitter. GPON and XGSPON can live simultaneously.
I don’t think we will ever hit the limits of PON quite frankly and swapping out PONs for newer and better standards is rather trivial.
It's equivalent to an old POTS party line, just with some makeup covering its shambling corpse (read: ITU G-number) and a bit more razzle-dazzle after strapping on some lasers. We can do better!
> It's equivalent to an old POTS party line
I strongly disagree. On a party line information flows along the copper cable to every connected endpoint bidirectionally. While it's true that incoming information flows to all subscribers, never does information that flows out and you only get scrambled data even on the incoming stream. So if you're trying to make a security argument: the system is also safe on a physical level.
> We can do better!
Depends on what "better" is. I was quite critical of PON in the past but I have come around. Practically at this point I think PON is a better way to run networks in most places. At one point you hit a bottleneck anyways and not having to run individual fibers makes for a more resilient and cheaper system.
Yes, exactly like one of those old copper POTS party lines - remember how providers could easily supply a reliable symmetrical multi-gigabit service over those (like we can with XGS-PON) and how they theoretically could use DWDM to move hundreds of gigabits over them? No??
What are the alternatives with passive splitter hardware that can work underwater if shit happens?
Fiber investment in The Netherlands from the big telcos is now fully based on XGS-PON. Many homes that already had fiber installed do have the technically superior AON (a dedicated fiber to the home), but it seems like investment in this infrastructure has stopped.
The current situation is one where XGS-PON users can get 5Gbps subscriptions, whereas AON users are stuck at 1Gbps - seemingly because the telcos aren’t upgrading their point-of-presence hardware to support anything beyond 1Gbps.
Do they actually bury PON components? Because around here they don’t. Fiber runs from homes to their concentrators and those house both the PON splitters and the OLTs. There’s some roadside boxes as well but afaik they’re only for splices, because those aren’t buried, either.
They've also started replacing AON with XGS-PON in some areas, by putting all the fiber combining/muxing devices you need for that inside the AON POP building (and sending out new devices etc.)
Even if you have AON you might have XGS-PON behind the scenes. In Switzerland end user fiber is AON more or less by regulation, but they just deploy the XGS-PON splitters in the COs.
For a while the maximum connection speed I could order was limited to 1 gbps. No XGS-PON here, the fiber rollout was 20 years ago in my neighbourhood so it's still the older standard. But interestingly they're now offering 4 gbps connections on the older standard as well.
I'm not sure how many home users order that, given the extra cost of 10g switches, NICs etc and then 90% of usage being via WiFi that only just makes it to 1 gbps. But it makes a lot of sense for businesses with multiple users sharing one connection.
> whereas AON users are stuck at 1Gbps - seemingly because the telcos aren’t upgrading
poor souls, though can we care about the low-end first?
> poor souls, though can we care about the low-end first?
What is the low end? Austria has a similar problem. There are some quite old and unmaintained AON networks where people are stuck with 100MBit whereas even G.Fast copper eclipses that in some cities at this point.
> What is the low end?
from my pov: <100mbps
> from my pov: <100mbps
Sure, but it's pretty ironic if you are stuck on a 100MBit fiber connection and a few buildings down you get 300MBit over twisted pair. And the problem with AON losing support is that you often can't find an independent ISP that would actually give you service over that AON you have.
The low end doesn't have to deal with AON vs GPON. They get DSL or DOCSIS, or if they're unlucky dial-up.
And when the poor souls on slow internet do get upgraded, AON vs GPON suddenly decides if they can get upgraded to the new higher speeds in the next ten years or not. 1gbps may be relatively slow in 10 years, but with a widely spread GPON you're not getting much more out of that, while with AON entire neighbourhoods can be upgraded by replacing a single rack in the local POP.
> but with a widely spread GPON you're not getting much more out of that, while with AON entire neighbourhoods can be upgraded by replacing a single rack in the local POP
Except in a few places it has been exactly the other way round. AON networks in Austria for instance have been built a few years back, some random companies ended up owning that infrastructure and don't upgrade. On the other hand the incumbents have built fiber, have rolled out GPON and have in the meantime upgraded to XGS-PON whereas many on AON got stuck. It's slowly moving but very gradually.
Where I am, the low end are all on 4G/5G, as the plans are cheaper and don't require contracts or construction fees like wired internet.
i dislike shared media and overly complicated mac as well as the next guy.
25gbps being "short sighted" is a bit of a stretch imho (running with 100mbps dsl and not feeling disadvantaged yet)
GPON has been such a bad idea...
One fiber, One ISP port has always been the right way.
I disagree. GPON is WAY cheaper to deploy.
The right way does not mean cheaper.
Why is one fibre (actually you'd probably like 2 for upstream and downstream) to one customer the way to go? Even with >100 customers on a single fibre it should be possible to get everyone on 100 Gbit/s (although there are currently no standards for it). That will future proof for a long time.
[flagged]
a bit more practical guides for those who want to swap ONT to SFP https://pon.wiki/
It's an interesting site but where's the 0xbeef? OK it explains how to telnet into some units but then what? How do I get the free HBO ser?
The point is to be able to use your own hardware, a fiber equivalent of buying your own cable modem and router.
I'm only just digging into the site, but some ONT pages (ex [1]) have information on how to set low-level parameters (MAC, various equipment IDs, etc). Probably won't get you free HBO, more likely to get your ONT banned at your ISP, but maybe you'll get free internet before that.
[1] https://hack-gpon.org/ont-nokia-g-010g-t/#gponomci-settings
This isn't about getting free internet, no competent ISP will let the link come up without a serial number registered with the port. This is about bypassing the awful gateway hardware many fiber ISPs mandate.
There are also folks that want to overwrite the MAC, serial, etc to clone their ISPs ONT - allowing them to use a different GPON/XGSPON ONT/SFP(+) module [0].
[0] https://pon.wiki/
All I want is to replace the accursed ISP's integrated GPON+router box.
Visited site, and tried to find SFP+ GPON modules that can do 2.5gbps.
It doesn't seem to have a simple list of SFP modules at all. Wtf?
maybe try fs.com
The future needs at least one completely Open Source, Open Hardware ONT... ideally several...
A Google search at this point in time seems to fail to locate even one...
The next best thing (a step in that direction) might be open source firmware for existing proprietary ONT's, for which I found the following links for people who are apparently attempting getting something like that working:
"Has anyone tried making custom firmware for your ONT?":
https://broadband.forum/threads/has-anyone-tried-making-cust...
"Build for Nokia G-2425G-A":
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/build-for-nokia-g-2425g-a/106936
Anyway, the future needs a completely Open Source, Open Hardware ONT...
GPON = Gigabit Passive Optical Network ONT = Optical Network Terminal OLT = Optical Line Termination SFP = Small Form-factor Pluggable
ONT = The device you have at home where the fiber goes in (router / modem)
OLT = The device where the fiber goes in on the provider side
OMG Thank You!
OMG?
good ol' Object Management Group
> The Object Management Group® Standards Development Organization (OMG® SDO) is a global, open membership, non-profit consortium.