GPON Vendors

Wed Dec 7 19:10:31 UTC 2011

In late August Calix came to our site and tested their IPv6 support on the
C7 platform for their upcoming 8.0 release.  They tested both on GPON and
VDSL2 using the N:1 (VLAN per service) approach.  There were some issues
that prevented all the CPE I had from working, but since then they've taken
it back and completed that work.  I've invited them back onsite to re-test
so we can validate before they begin their controlled release.

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Tinka [mailto:mtinka at globaltransit.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2011 2:46 AM
To: Owen DeLong
Cc: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: GPON Vendors

On Wednesday, December 07, 2011 03:43:20 PM Owen DeLong 
wrote:

> In any such vendor choice, I'd say make sure that they
> have workable IPv6 before making any major investments.
> Otherwise, you've got a dead-end platform that won't
> serve you very well for very many years.

GPON deployment for FTTH tends to be, really, an Ethernet 
switch. There is just additional intelligence thrown in to 
keep the thing from being suicidal at Layer 2 for that many 
customers when doing typical consumer broadband.

If you're using the GPON AN as as a regular switch, i.e., 
one VLAN per customer, then you can roll IPv6 to your FTTH 
customers just as you would on a Cisco Catalyst switch, for 
example.

But most operators are using them for broadband deployments, 
and the split horizon mechanisms implemented as part of the 
Broadband Forum spec. for GPON make it unintuitive that v6 
be supported off the bat for DHCP and PPPoE. Of course, this 
isn't rocket science, and just needs to be added in software 
- a problem many vendors are suffering from. As we do with 
all of them, keep pushing for support for the features you 
need in v6. Just make sure you don't buy a dud.

Mark.