Fibre Splitter Node for FibreDP Hardware ATT: Zarjaz

Hey Zarjaz

I have a question about the Splitter Node.

As you might already know this, but we can now order FTTP which I did on Friday 12th August, which is due to go live on the 26th August.

We had our first engineer visit on Monday 15th August to install the fibre, I was really shocked on how quick this visit was booked, maybe it was due to Gavin Patterson got involved.

Sadly there was a build issue

Basically our fibres on our FibreDP hardware is in the wrong tray in the splitter node, so they couldn't complete our first install.

How easy would it be for them to resolve this issue?

There is only 1 line on that splitter node which is currently using fibre that is on our FibreDP Hardware, so you wouldn't be able to move them anyway due to it would interrupt that homes broadband connection and phone line.

I said couldn't they just write on the trays in the splitter node to say what FibreDP hardware that tray is connected to.

How often does this happen and does it gets fixed quick, due to like I said its down as to be live on the Friday 26th August.

There has already been other homes that have ordered fibre on our hardware which are all in the same boat as us and I would hate for us to be the left out due to our install being rescheduled and end up being done last to find out there is no more fibres.

It would be like a kick in the face considering it was me that put all the hard work in over the last 4 or so years, to get it to this stage with the help of my local MP.

Or are the fibres allocated when the order is placed.

Paul

Basically our fibres on our FibreDP hardware is in the wrong tray in the splitter node, so they couldn't complete our first install.

This doesn't sound like an accurate description of a problem that would stop a step one install.

As long as the fibre from the DP node actually gets to the correct splitter node, where it arrives doesn't actually matter, the only issue is that it would be incorrect on records.

All that needs doing is a light source put on at the DP, or at the CSP and trace it to the splitter.

There is an MDU site I work at where the fibres from the DP don't come up as routed on the splitter node. You simply adopt the above process, and provide service, and then ring the fibre routing team and have them manually update the records.

The above is why the problem with yours might be something else OR you got a reet numpty of a 1st stage bod, there are some noobs out there.


* Hopefully Bob will be posting a link to a splitter node's guts shortly, then I can describe the above a little clearer.

That'll teach me to sleep on the job. Starting work on it now.

Hang on Bob .... will this do ?

It will......

The red trays contain the 'feed' fibres, the 'E-sides' if this were a copper cabinet. They are all lit/live.

The white trays beneath contain the (2 per tray) fibres from the DP nodes.

You take a live fibre from the red tray out and threadle it down to the correct tray , make the splice wind it all in, sorted.

If the fibre from the DP node comes up on the incorrect tray, no problem, just connect that up and correct the records.

With luck, on the same link, all the newer pics are also present now.

I'll try to get them on a website page within a week, but not right now.

This one shows a DP tray open and on display. (and my trusty Sumitomo splicer)

Looking at the flagstones in the background you may have been "Just splicing in the rain, all alone and blue".

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Basically our fibres on our FibreDP hardware is in the wrong tray in the splitter node, so they couldn't complete our first install.

This doesn't sound like an accurate description of a problem that would stop a step one install.

As long as the fibre from the DP node actually gets to the correct splitter node, where it arrives doesn't actually matter, the only issue is that it would be incorrect on records.

Thats what I thought, I was explaining it to one of my neighbours (which also ordered it the same time as me) that it shouldn't stop them doing the first install and all the engineer needed to do is just pick a fibre at the DP and use that.

And when the second engineer visit happens, all they would need to do is find out what fibre that was the other end and update the record to that fibre for that home, simple.

So does this happen a lot, or is this rare?

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

All that needs doing is a light source put on at the DP, or at the CSP and trace it to the splitter.

Well I did suggest a similar way of installing it all and on the second visit stick a light source on the fibre in our home and go to the other end (I said the exchange), where he did say that they wouldn't need to go to the exchange and all they would need to go to was the splitter.

So I was very close

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

There is an MDU site I work at where the fibres from the DP don't come up as routed on the splitter node. You simply adopt the above process, and provide service, and then ring the fibre routing team and have them manually update the records.

The above is why the problem with yours might be something else OR you got a reet numpty of a 1st stage bod, there are some noobs out there.

Well all I know is there is loads of fibres at our DP and they are all going to our splitter node the bottom of our road, the engineer has confirmed that, he just said our DP (might mean all our DP's down our road) is using the wrong trays in the splitter node and that it need to be corrected before they can progress.

I did say just mark on the splitter trays what DP they are connecting to, but that wouldn't resolve the records issue.

What I am really worried about is other people on our hardware i.e. phone pole are also now ordering FTTP.

And due to I was the first to order (apart from the home 4 doors down) I am worried that where this issue is there my live date of the 26th August might get rescheduled to a later date and by then if the issue gets resolved the others gets theirs first and by the time of my re-scheduled order (if it gets rescheduled) there won't be any available fibres.

Like I said it would be a kick in the face after all the hard work I have put in (i.e. just under 5 years) and the 2 or so years work my local MP has done for me not to be able to get fibre would suck big time.

Or are the fibres allocated when we place our order?

I am guessing its as soon as the first engineer visit has been completed is when that fibre strand has been allocated.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

* Hopefully Bob will be posting a link to a splitter node's guts shortly, then I can describe the above a little clearer.

Just looked at your pictures, so the red ones are the four fibres that get fed into the splitter and the grey trays are for the fibres leaving the splitter, that makes sense.

So each grey tray would house 4 fibres (4 x 32), so I can see what the engineer was saying now, where it was all over the place, our splitter might have fibres from different DP's going to the same tray in the splitter.

But like you said a record change would resolve that issue, the only fibres that are being used on that splitter is four doors from me and that's it.
Our splitter as far as I know is only for the lower part of our road and side roads there, the upper part of our road and those side roads are using a different splitter and are going a different route.

So a record is defiantly the best route to go and that could be either done all now or when the order is placed or on the first or second visit.

Paul

I posted this a long time back, with the installation guide to the splitter node included:
http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/4375161-fibre...

Page 2 has a layout guide to the different trays...

From the labelling, and matching to your photo, it looks like the trays above the red ones could be a source of problems.

The top-most one (label E8) looks to hold spare E-side fibre, for use when the second splitter device gets added.

The next 5 trays (label E3 - E7) say they hold spare D-side fibre... presumably not yet routed down into the live "address point" trays.

What if all the D-side fibres have been stored in the top set of trays, and haven't yet been routed down into the live ones? Would you just move them yourself?

So to answer the first bits ... No, the first stage engineer get it all the way to the CSP, it is they who should be sorting all this out.

The fibre routing is allocated at the time the job is raised.

Just looked at your pictures, so the red ones are the four fibres

The red trays each hold a bunch of live fibres, ten maybe. More can be added as and when.

So each grey tray would house 4 fibres

Nope, Each grey tray holds 2 fibres, one on the top and one on the bottom.

What if all the D-side fibres have been stored in the top set of trays, and haven't yet been routed down into the live ones? Would you just move them yourself?

If that was the problem, yes.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

So to answer the first bits ... No, the first stage engineer get it all the way to the CSP, it is they who should be sorting all this out.

Ah ok, Well BT phoned me today and said Openreach has put a hold on the install until this issue out and that an engineer will be sent out to resolve this issue and said it could take about 2 weeks to be sorted.

So I have to just wait now until the 7th September (at the latest) to be told if that works been completed or not, a neighbour of mine across the road has to wait until the 9th.

So at this point I am a bit annoyed along with a few neighbours.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The fibre routing is allocated at the time the job is raised.

Ah, that's a relief, BT have kept the order open and it's being monitored by the Fibre to the home team and high level.

I have also been told they are keeping the order open so that I don't loose my spot in the queue due to there are others on our hardware that is starting to order fibre and if they rescheduled my order it would basically be a cancel and new order, resulting me being put at the back of the queue.

So basically when I ordered FTTP from BT, BT placed the order with openreach, and it was then an individual fibre was allocated to us and to only us, but if this order was cancelled that fibre would be released.

So if they keep the order open, does that mean it will still get done when that "issue" has been resolved, or will BT need to make a new order?

So its like a port for FTTC when a customer leaves, their port is released for the next customer.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Just looked at your pictures, so the red ones are the four fibres

The red trays each hold a bunch of live fibres, ten maybe. More can be added as and when.

Oh, well I was completely wrong about how the Splitter Node worked.
I was under the impression that the splitter took in 4 fibres and split each of those fibres into 32 new strands i.e. 4 * 32 = 128 = 100 + 28 spare fibres.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

So each grey tray would house 4 fibres

Nope, Each grey tray holds 2 fibres, one on the top and one on the bottom.

Yeah I saw that in the pdf's that I just read, I always thought where there is about 32 odd grey trays that there would be 4 lots of fibres per tray.

So does that mean to get 100 - 128 fibres it would use both sides of the splitter as well (2 fibres per tray * 2 sides * 32 trays) = 128 fibres.
Or is that wrong?

Paul

Yes they quite often use both sides.

Here's Another kind of Splitter node, on this one, no DP node, just a straight blow from the manifold and the feed fibres are in the green trays this time.

Nice, a clearer picture of the splitter node that shows both sides was Photo0013.jpg

Paul

They ain't bad for phone snaps are they ? God Bless me trusty 5s.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

They ain't bad for phone snaps are they ? God Bless me trusty 5s.

Yeah, not bad at all
Not a fan of iPhones myself, I use my trusty Galaxy S II which still works and does all what I need and comes with a nice camera too

Paul

Cheers for sharing. Not seen one of those before.

Clever design, hopefully the fibres don't get damaged too easily, e.g. When lifting and lowering the splitter!

The splitter device takes in the one E-side fibre, and spits out 32 D-side tails. There is space for 4 of these devices in a node, but the node only comes with one pre-installed.

IIRC, that device appears in the photo as a fatter tray at the top of one side, with none at all on the other side.

When the node is first deployed, one D-side fibre is spliced to the device. The other 3 fibres (plus spares) will be stored in the top-most of the slimmer trays, and the 3 slots for the other devices will be empty.

When more capacity is needed, I guess they add an extra splitter device, splice it to a new D-side fibre, and put the 32 tails into the red trays.

What kind of bandwidth does a splitter have to share between all of its customers?

cheers,

Adrian.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The splitter device takes in the one E-side fibre, and spits out 32 D-side tails. There is space for 4 of these devices in a node, but the node only comes with one pre-installed.

IIRC, that device appears in the photo as a fatter tray at the top of one side, with none at all on the other side.

When the node is first deployed, one D-side fibre is spliced to the device. The other 3 fibres (plus spares) will be stored in the top-most of the slimmer trays, and the 3 slots for the other devices will be empty.

When more capacity is needed, I guess they add an extra splitter device, splice it to a new D-side fibre, and put the 32 tails into the red trays.

Ah, ok.
That makes sense, I think we have 3 DP's (including ours) connected to the Splitter Node, I say think due to our DP is the only one at the moment that can order FTTP, might also be down to my local MP writting a letter to Gavin Patterson (CEO of BT Group plc) about our hardware.

So in theory we would then have a possible of 10 or 11 to 32 fibres at our DP, But its probably 10 or 11, I know the FTTP Engineer said there was loads of fibres at our DP, or would they say that for 10 fibres.

I know there is about 21 homes connected to our phone pole and some have more than one phone line, but lets assume one FTTP per home, so we would need to have 21 fibres at our DP for us all to get FTTP.

As far as I know at least 5 have open orders including ours, I say open due to we are waiting for Openreach to fix their blunder with the trays at the splitter node.

So if we go with say 10 to 11 fibres at our DP we are already half way populated

Paul

I think the number of fibres is likely to be a multiple of 12 - the cables are constructed with the fibres bound together in groups of 12, and are best split apart in that grouping.

They might then dimension that as 10 useable, and 2 spare for breakage.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I think the number of fibres is likely to be a multiple of 12 - the cables are constructed with the fibres bound together in groups of 12, and are best split apart in that grouping.

They might then dimension that as 10 useable, and 2 spare for breakage.

Yeah, very possibly, I will find out when I see them come back to finally get to start our first visit.

Paul

The splitter isn't the limitation, it is the optics back at the head-end exchange.

Current generation used GPON optics, which gives 2.5Gbps down, 1Gbps up.
Next generation 10GPON gives 10Gbps down, 2.5Gbps up.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The splitter isn't the limitation, it is the optics back at the head-end exchange.

Current generation used GPON optics, which gives 2.5Gbps down, 1Gbps up.
Next generation 10GPON gives 10Gbps down, 2.5Gbps up.

I was referring to asking the engineer about the fibres, not the splitter.

Sooo, 2.5Gbps down per fibre going into the splitter, so if everyone hammered their connection at the very same time we would get a download speed of about 78.125Mbps, haven't we discussed this in another post.

No chance in abusing the upstream (1Gbps / 32 = 31.25Mbps) LOL.

I rather like the 10Gbps shared by 32 lines LOL.

*** update ***
Also with our fibre cable, back in July 2015 they replaced it with a 96 fibre core cable so that would be 8 lots of 12 fibres.

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Fri 19-Aug-16 19:16:24)

Ahh ok, for some reason I thought it was down to splitter capability.

Is it possible to have multiple head-end feeds going in to a single splitter to reduce contention?

KCOM are using GPON, and even the Openreach FTTP ONT, but are very generous with the speeds, particularly on the business packages. Ranging from 250/125 to 1000/500.

Edited by deleted (Fri 19-Aug-16 20:23:31)

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

Sooo, 2.5Gbps down per fibre going into the splitter, so if everyone hammered their connection at the very same time we would get a download speed of about 78.125Mbps, haven't we discussed this in another post.

Ironic that it comes up to being about the same capability as an FTTC line

Seriously, though, they can use statistical stuff to determine a reasonable maximum to the headline rate while not triggering too much congestion. The cable industry has had to work like this for years...

IIRC, the cable guys figure they can sell a top-tier headline speed where 4 such subscribers could fill things up. If BT chose to work to similar targets, you'd be looking at top packages of 600Mbps.

In reply to a post by adriandaz:

Is it possible to have multiple head-end feeds going in to a single splitter to reduce contention?

Nearly. The splitters are often described as 2x32, meaning two incoming feeds, and 32 subscriber feeds.

However, I think the head-end feeds are really meant to allow for dual-parenting for reliability/availability reasons, rather than for capacity reasons. I'm no expert on optics, but I suspect that load-sharing would require multiple wavelengths, and the ONT's likely don't have that kind of capability at all - never mind the ability to alter dynamically.

On that front, though, I believe you can run both GPON and 10GPON through the same splitter at the same time, even from a single head-end, because they do use separate wavelengths. The ONT used by the customer then determines which service he is on.