It had been my impression that ONTs, like most other consumer modems,
came with built-in router capabilities (along with ATA for voice).
The assertion that ONTs have built-in routing capabilities has been
challenged.
Can anyone confirm whether ONTs generally have routing (aka: home router
that does the PPPoE or DHCP and then NAT for home) capabilities?
Are there examples where a telco has deployed ONTs with the router
built-in and enabled ? Or would almost all FTTH deployments be made with
any routing disabled and the ONT acting as a pure ethernet bridge ?
(I appreciate your help on this as I am time constrained to do research).
Some are and some don't. For example the ZHONE active ethernet boxes are Linux on the inside and you can do a variety of different things with them, either making them do the NAT or be bridged back to the aggregation gear.
- jared
Jean-Francois,
I've seen it done both ways, and _usually_ newer ONTs will have the
capacity even if its not used. Having said that there is no real
standardization between vendors other than the physical layer (and even
that's not great) so what's common for one vendor may well be unheard of
for another. Making generalizations about G/EPON gear is very hard right
now and its worse for the older standards like BPON.
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
I notice Cisco's new ME4600 ONT's come in two flavors, one (the
"Residential GateWay") with all the bells and whistles that you'd expect in
an all-in-one home router (voice ports, small ethernet switch, wifi access
point) and another (the "Single Family Unit") that looks a lot more basic
and is likely to be deployed as a bridge.
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/me-4600-series-multiservice-optical-access-platform/datasheet-c78-730446.html
Aled
It had been my impression that ONTs, like most other consumer modems,
came with built-in router capabilities (along with ATA for voice).
The assertion that ONTs have built-in routing capabilities has been
challenged.
By who?
Can anyone confirm whether ONTs generally have routing (aka: home router
that does the PPPoE or DHCP and then NAT for home) capabilities?
All the unit's I've seen have this capability. We don't use it though.
Are there examples where a telco has deployed ONTs with the router
built-in and enabled ? Or would almost all FTTH deployments be made with
any routing disabled and the ONT acting as a pure ethernet bridge ?
No way to tell, since configuring routing capability in a router that has it built in is a relatively trivial task.
It would be like asking how many people use the "bagel" button on their toaster, if it has this capability built in.
Many thanks for the answers so far.
The assertion that ONTs have built-in routing capabilities has been
challenged.
By who?
A rather large company in Canada whose name contains the last name of
the inventor of the Telephone 
(actually from their Atlantic Canada arm).
I know that Bell Canada's FTTH deployment includes a Sagemcom VDSL modem
after the ONT. It uses it as plain router in FTTH because it supports
twin VLANs (one for internet and other for IPTV) and I guess they
figured it would be easier to standarize on a single router across its
DSL and FTTH footprint.
Not sure what Bell Aliant uses.
My argument had been that in a wholesale context, the Sagemcom must not
be included when wholesale service since it is not necessary.
Calix makes a number of ONTs some with residential gateways, some that are
just bridges
Can we please stop equating FTTH and PON?
There are plenty FTTH deployments that are not PON.
I know of a well-known vendor coming out with a new OLT that
supports both typical GPON access, as well as Active-E
access, and with IP routing capabilities.
It hasn't yet hit the shelves, but for anyone with an ounce
of interest in FTTH, you will hear about it soon.
So yes, in the past it has been hit & miss, but I think
there are some vendors who are now seriously pushing a box
that is multi-lingual, i.e., supports GPON, Active-E, IP and
MPLS.
Mark.
Ah, so looks like it's been announced now - that is the
breed I was referring to; the ME4600 OLT.
Mark.
Having just gone through The Usual Crap getting a new Bright House/
Road Runner deploy into bridge mode for our own router (ask at order,
ask installer, find out it isn't anyway, call tech support, 45 minute
hold time, says twice they set it, still isn't set, magically reboots
into bridge mode 45 minutes after they give up), I'm wondering:
If you deploy edge gear in this class, optical, DOCSIS or DSL, what
percentage of installs want bridge mode cause they're supplying
their own router, and what percentage want you to supply the full
training-wheels package?
Cheers,
-- jra
There are many ONTs out there with various abilities. I can only comment on what I deploy, and what various telcos deploy that I am familiar with.
A few years ago, all of our AE and GPON ONTs were deployed as bridges. Port 1 was generally an Internet VLAN, and port 2,3,4 were IPTV VLANs. We have been using Occam (now Calix), but are considering other options at this point. Currently we bridge all services on GPON deployments, but rent routers for the Internet service if customers do not wish to provide their own.
The 700-series ONTs are able to bounce between GPON and AE deployments with a firmware change, so they are very flexible. Calix has apparently released RG code (Residential Gateway, basic home router functionality) for for the 700s, but we don't use that code.
We also deploy 836 ONTs, which had RG code built-in on release, and also WiFi. The 836s currently only do AE, but were originally supposed to do GPON/AE similar to the 700-series.
Today, the standard AE deployment is an 836 with RG code enabled for WiFi and Port 1. WAN is DHCP, authorized with Option 82/RADIUS for bandwidth profiles. LAN does NAT, and hands out a 192.168.88.0/24 subnet to break as few consumer routers as possible. We have no problem enabling bridging for Port 1 if the customer requests it. We bridge Port 2,3,4 for IPTV because the RG functionality breaks certain features, namely call display on the TVs. The 836s can do Static, PPPoE, or DHCP on the WAN side.
We use MGCP for voice.
FYI, Calix has GPON support for the 836GE ONT on the E7 today, and it will
be supported in GPON mode in Release 9.0 on the C7.
Frank
I have used a lot of Calix gear. It works good until they decide to EoL
your platform. They grow through acquisition, then see which products
they want to keep. Adtran seems to have the same features and the same
pricepoint. The Calix E7 is a relatively new product...plenty of bugs
compared to the much more mature TA5000.
Oh and if you don't show these the other guys prices they will dine out
on your tab. Funny how much lower people can go when they realize you
are bidding something out.
Kevin