EchoLife GPON Terminal and Second Router

Hi

My friend has just converted their garage and their current wifi doesn't stretch from the house so they want to extend the network in some way. He has BT Fibre in the house and also an EchoLife GPON Terminal (HG8010H5-20) which I've not really heard of before. It has 2 ports - Ethernet and Optical. The ethernet port is connected to his main router. The Optical port was never in use.
When his garage was being done someone came along and installed an Optical cable from the GPON terminal to his garage where it ends in a standard looking RJ11 wall socket. He was told he could just run a cable from this socket to a second router and that would give him wifi in the garage.

Would this actually work? I know nothing about the GPON terminal or this optical socket. In my world it would have to be the ethernet/data port that is extended into the garage (either via a switch/integrated ethernet cabling or powerline adapters) - can the network be extended via this optical cable or is that used for something else?
I've extended networks before with second routers, disabling DNS and assigning a static IP address so I know what to do there. I just don't know if this optical cable is able to extend the network or if that'll never work?

heathmount

In reply to a post by heathmount:

When his garage was being done someone came along and installed an Optical cable from the GPON terminal to his garage where it ends in a standard looking RJ11 wall socket. He was told he could just run a cable from this socket to a second router and that would give him wifi in the garage.

Are you sure it is an optical cable? You need electronics to convert from fibre to ethernet wire cable. It would be more sensible for it to be an RJ45 socket connected to an 8 wire ethernet cat 5e (or whatever) cable. What is at the other end of the cable?

Hi

All I've got to go on are some photos. The EchoLife box has 2 ports.There's an ethernet port which has a cable linking it directly to the main BT home hub router. Then there's the optica/green port which has never been used. Now from the photos I see a new green cable coming from the optical port on the EchoLIfe box and I'm told this terminates in the garage in a wall socket which accepts an RJ11 connection.

My friend has now used a standard RJ11 cable to connect this scoket in the garage to a secondary router and expects a wifi connection.

I have no idea what is happening internally between the EchoLife Optical Out and the RJ11 socket in the garge. I have no idea if this is standard practise to extend a home network or if this will never work?

Sounds wrong to me.

The optical port is to receive the fibre feed coming in from the external fibre network (from the exchange as it were)

Which sorts of makes sense. But that port on the EchoLife box has apparently been empty for 2 years and clearly there's been no issues. It's only since a new garage was built that someone supposedly connected a new cable from the EchoLife/Optical to a new RJ11 socket in the garage. From what I'm hearing, doesn't sound like that's going to do anything.

In reply to a post by heathmount:

Then there's the optical/green port which has never been used. Now from the photos I see a new green cable coming from the optical port on the EchoLife box

I think you have received incorrect information from your friend, the green connecter is the incoming service from the Openreach network (as another member has stated), without a connection from the Openreach network into this port there would be no broadband. I suspect the ethernet cable in the garage is going to a ethernet port on the router.

Ah ok, There is no ethernet cable in the garage, just an RJ11 connection which, let's be honest, I have no idea where it comes from! Sounds like you've answered my questions though which is that the green/optical connection is incoming rather that outgoing.

Thanks for the responses, think I'll fall back to the standard powerline adapters which should do the trick.

heathmount

It sounds like someone has obtained a ONT from ebay and is trying to use that to extend the WAN to the Garage.

If he has FTTP rather than FTTC he should have another ONT that connects to the OR fibre.

So complete setup as described sounds like.

OR Fibre (FTTP)Yellow - ONT ( OR)- Ethernet to router ( Green) - Ethernet to additional ONT (Green)- Fibre to garage ( Yellow) - RJ11 ??. This will not work.

What he should have is

OR Fibre (FTTP)Yellow - ONT ( OR)- Ethernet to router ( Green) - Ethernet to Garage - 2nd router./ WIfi access point etc.

Post deleted by dect

Edited by deleted (Thu 21-Apr-22 17:19:46)

In reply to a post by kitcat:

It sounds like someone has obtained a ONT from ebay and is trying to use that to extend the WAN to the Garage.

Which couldn't possibly work, because an ONT can only talk to an OLT.