One thing I'm personally interested in is the growth of municipal FTTx
that's starting to happen around the US and possibly applying that
model to highly rural areas (e.g. 10 mile long town with no side
streets, existing utility polls, 250 or so homes) and doing a
realistic cost analysis of what that would take.
What options are out there for Active-Ethernet hardware. Ideally
something that could handle G.8032 and 802.1ad in hardware for the
distribution side (24 or 48-port SFP metro switch) and something
inexpensive for the access side but still managed (e.g. a 4-port
switch with an SFP uplink supporting Q-in-Q).
I'm really looking for something cheap to keep costs down for a
proof-of-concept. The stuff from Cisco and even Ciena is a bit more
expensive than my target.
We are using TP-LINK for ETTH, and it seems very good with a fair price.
Only the problem is they like to make completely another device and sell
it as the same part number but another "hardware revision" which is only
written by small letters on the device itself. So you have to keep an
eye on it.
Price and functionality-wise Planet MGSW-28240F and GSD-1020S look
pretty close to what I'm looking for. Anyone have real experience
with using them on a large scale? Performance?
What options are out there for Active-Ethernet hardware. Ideally something that could handle G.8032 and 802.1ad in hardware for the distribution side (24 or 48-port SFP metro switch) and something inexpensive for the access side but still managed (e.g. a 4-port switch with an SFP uplink supporting Q-in-Q).
These kinds of devices are quite popular here in Sweden where we basically have no PON what so ever (I know of no major PON deployments, everything is active ethernet either over CAT5e/CAT6 or fiber):
(I am not affiliated with Inteno, I just know they are quite common in the market here and the above list is to provide examples of producs used here)
They typically use BiDi optics to run bidirectional fiber over single strand, in some cases in conjunction with hardware that runs HFC on the other strand.
I'm really looking for something cheap to keep costs down for a proof-of-concept. The stuff from Cisco and even Ciena is a bit more expensive than my target.
Typically people here tend to buy regular enterprise hardware, but still that can do the BCP38 kind of stuff needed to deliver a proper secure end user connection. List of some vendors here: http://secureenduserconnection.se/certified-products/
We are small ISP. We used Linksys SPS208G for access level, and Cisco ME3400
for aggregation purposes. On Core level we use Cisco3560, now we have some
plans to migrate to Cat 6500.
Generally, I haven’t seen many issues. I see our home Internet slow down once in a while, but I doubt its anything to do with the Planet devices but more so with the way the provider operates their network.
Unless each customer has in their own L3 domain, you'll also want some kind
of L2 isolation between ports (and also MFF) and IP source address
verification (so that people can't spoof addresses) for both DHPC and static
IP customers. And don't forget the IPv6 equivalents.
You can get all that in a decent Active-E-based AN (as you would in a
GPON AN). But then the price starts to go up if you want this in
software as opposed to doing funky things.
Cisco's ME2600X was, for me, one of the first proper Active-E FTTH AN's
with features required in FTTH deployments (split horizon for Layer 2
customer separation, DHCP Option 82 support, per-port level trTCM
ingress and egress policing and queuing, EVC's, e.t.c.).
I understand it is now being replaced by the ASR920, which is a little
odd if you look at port density differences between the two alone.
For the GPON-centric, it is also being replaced by Cisco's ME4605 GPON AN.
Final date to buy any ME2600X's will be June 2015.
Price and functionality-wise Planet MGSW-28240F and GSD-1020S look
pretty close to what I'm looking for. Anyone have real experience
with using them on a large scale? Performance?
Thank you for the pointer to MGSW-28240F. I am also curious to hear some
feedback as the gear is awfully low-priced
Well, it's on the web site, and our AM team gave us a price a few weeks ago.
I'm just surprised why they'd do this, considering you need tons of
ports in an FTTH setup, and the ASR920 is short on those.
I've asked the BU to work on a 48-port switch re: the ASR920, as I think
that would go well with the 4x 10Gbps uplink ports and make for a good
upgrade path for the ME3600X/3800X.
Cisco's thinking of getting 4x 10Gbps ports on the ASR920 (compared to
2x on the ME3600X/3800X) is if operators have customers that want to
take 10Gbps ports, they can use the additional 10Gbps ports. Not sure
how good an idea that is, as for me, I'd not be willing to tell
customers we can do 10Gbps at a PoP with this device since I can only
sell to one customer; two at the most if I'm being really pushy with the
unit. I'd need some scalability.
We have several of them in service for almost 18 months now. Overall I'm
happy with them, but I have had some minor issues.
I had an issue where DHCP Option 82 information was incorrect and support
had a new firmware fix within 72 hours.
When trying to access the oldest events in the detailed system log after
months of uptime will cause the switch to reboot.
I have an issue where SFP's won't fully power up or turn on when inserted.
Move the SFP to a different port and it will work fine. OR if you leave it
in the non working port and power cycle the switch it will then work fine.
May just be an incompatibility with the cheap fiberstore SFPs.
Other than that I can't think of anything else. We're not doing anything
fancy on them. Just single vlan per port.
