FTTH ONTs and routers

Fri May 16 16:14:46 UTC 2014

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.

-- 
Pete Baldwin

On 14-05-15 01:11 PM, Jean-Francois Mezei wrote:
> 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).
>