DSL CPE

Tue Jan 9 14:13:12 UTC 2018

The CLEC that I do some contract work for uses a basic single port ethernet
only Comtrend 5072T ADSL2+ modem for all residential customers and business
customers who don't have a bonded connection. Very reliable modem. The 5071
had bad powersupplies, but seemed worked better on loops with lousy stats.
I think their idea is less tech support calls when a customer complains
that they cannot connect a wifi device or doesn't know what the password
is. Less things to break or have to maintain. The CLEC tells the customer
to buy their own wireless router which 95% of the customers already have or
have no issues in buying. For the business customers who have a bonded
ADSL2+ connection, they use a Zyxel VMG4325 modem/router/wifi CPE device.
It has a lot of configuration options. I'm not sure how reliable they are.
I've been on a few trouble calls where I had to replace a questionable
modem or the modem didn't like when one of the two bonded loops had issues
(modem wouldn't pass upstream traffic instead of just knocking out the bad
loop). The CLEC doesn't use PPPoE at all.

The LEC in this state (Fairpoint) uses similar hardware. I think Fairpoint
has a Comtrend provisioning box to push out the PPPoE settings for Comtrend
modems which is really handy for them.

Hope this helps in some limited way.

Regards,

Joshua Zukerman
Snow Pond Technology Group Inc.
www.snowpondtech.com

On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 8:50 AM, Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net> wrote:

> After a few off-list responses (and a couple on) encouraging me to use
> NANOG, here we go...
>
>
> I've recently walked in to a voice\DSL CLEC that has basically been left
> to entropy for the last ten years. A lot of the core systems just work, but
> a lot of things aren't exactly managed the best. They run a Calix\Occam
> ADSL2+\VDSL infrastructure. For those of you doing DSL, what CPE are you
> using? I'm looking at one that's just a basic modem where I have a more
> sophisticated router (or ATA\voice gateway) behind it and then one more
> generic for residential settings with WiFi and all that jazz. We're kinda
> debating whether we go just dumb Wi-Fi or something more advanced\powerful.
> I've heard a lot of good about the Calix GigaFamily in that regard.
>
>
>
>
> -----
> Mike Hammett
> Intelligent Computing Solutions
> http://www.ics-il.com
>
> Midwest-IX
> http://www.midwest-ix.com
>
>