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?
replies(2):
[1] https://hack-gpon.org/ont-nokia-g-010g-t/#gponomci-settings
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/).
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/oregon-man-sentenced-boston-3...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/01/hacking-cable-mo...
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 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.
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.
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 :)
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
More infra at the OLT end, yes.
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.
I think it's often more a "router with ONT built in" rather than an "ONT with router built in".
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.
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)
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.
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.
Just MAC authentication and go..
I think selling users SFP ONTs is probably the right balance of ISP control vs allowing customer freedom
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.
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?
It just works, and I can plug my own router in to it.
That's either a horde that understands the issue, or is an even smaller subset that is going to be a pita anyway.
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.
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.
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.
Your fiber is asymmetrical (not 1g/1g) - like low-latency cable?
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.
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...
The normal state of affairs is
demarcation point
isp network | your network
---[fiber]---(ont)===[copper]===(router)===(wifi ap)
Demarcation point
? ? ?
---[fiber]---(ont/router/ap)***[2.4GHz]***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.
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.
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).
[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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But I have read that some other communities that have tried the same model have had trouble attracting ISPs.
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.
That makes me think of this Danger 5 scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDhrjKZprOo
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.
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).
I want a dumb gpon sfp not because they won't give me a bridge, but because their bridge makes too much noise.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
There may also be a latency benefit of using a device that is an ONT/modem/router in one. It's one ethernet hop less, but I haven't measured.
tl;dr: when you use your own ONT, you have a choice of picking a known-reliable option.
I am also subscribed to extra support. It's 5 Euro per month extra, but you skip all the queues and get directly connected to someone who knows all the technical stuff. With them it's basically giving them your ONT ID over the phone and they immediately set it for you (and they stay on the line until it's confirmed on both sides that it works). I will just call them again after the FRITZ!Box 5690 XGS comes out.