Community Fibre 3Gbps SFP+

Hi,

I'm looking to move to their 3Gbps tarrif this summer. Looking at the Zyxel router they provide , it seems to have an "SFP+ cage". I'm wondering do they supply an XGS-PON module for this which I can then plug into my own network equipment rather than use their router. I know it's a bit of a niche product but maybe someone out there has experience with it.

Cheers

Can you provide the router model number?

I don't know the specifics of CF's service, but I'll just point out that any 3Gbps service needs to provide a high-speed connection to *your* local network in order to be able to use it. Therefore I'd imagine that the SFP+ port is provided to connect their router to your own 10G switch, or to a 10G NIC on your PC.

This can be done over short distances (<7m) using an SFP+ Direct Attach Cable, or for longer distances over fibre, using a pair of SFP+ transceivers.

Yeah my network is 10Gbps ready (actually have 40Gbps running on part of it). I'm wondering how easy it would be to slot their SFP+ module in.

Looks to me like the SFP+ pluggable is a simple transceiver and requires host functionality on the AX7501-B0 router they supply to perform ONT/ONU duties.

In short, it won’t work outside of the AX7501-B0 box. It’s not the same functionality as a pluggable ONT like for example a Huawei MA5671A

https://service-provider.zyxel.com/global/en/product...

Looking at what Community Fibre publish here:
https://communityfibre.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles...
It looks like the router supplied is "3GBPS ZYXEL AX7501 ROUTER"
https://service-provider.zyxel.com/global/en/product...

This model does indeed have an SFP+ for the WAN side, which they say can either be XGS-PON or point-to-point at the network operator's choice. The LAN side is 10G on copper (RJ45), plus four 1G RJ45.

So you *might* be able to plug their XGS-PON module into some other router with SFP+, like the Mikrotik RB4011, but it depends very much on what that router supports.

It may be possible to put their Zyxel into bridge mode, and then connect your own router into that using 10G on RJ45.

Finally, you could leave the Zyxel in place, put your own router behind it, and then add a static route on the Zyxel pointing to the subnets which are behind your router.

Also, you could ask if they would supply the ADTRAN 621X instead of the Zyxel.

This is an XGS-PON pure ONT. It would be perfect for hooking up an existing router, as long as it has 10G RJ45 WAN interface.

However as far as I can see, it also relies on an SFP+ XGS-PON module:
https://portal.adtran.com/pub/Library/Data_Sheets/In...

I've asked CF this before (when I was pondering upgrading to their 3Gbit service). The SFP+ module is not a pluggable ONT in itself - the Zyxel router itself does the authentication against their OLT rather than the SFP+. You'd need to stick it in bridge mode if given the Zyxel. They also have an Adtran ONT with 10G handoff but unsure if they still supply it.

Edited by branflakes (Sat 21-May-22 10:23:41)

Yeah the most likely will be be 10Gbps via RJ45 and put the Zyxel in bridge mode. The only issue is the RJ45/SFP+ transceivers get a bit hot.

I have a leased line with them and I have the non-10Gbps version of the ADTRAN. I might ask for that 10Gbps version. Might be worth seeing what they say

In reply to a post by roundrobin:

Yeah the most likely will be be 10Gbps via RJ45 and put the Zyxel in bridge mode. The only issue is the RJ45/SFP+ transceivers get a bit hot.

I have a leased line with them and I have the non-10Gbps version of the ADTRAN. I might ask for that 10Gbps version. Might be worth seeing what they say

Do they use a 621X to terminate their DIA circuit? Interesting..

All 10G stuff gets quite hot; 10GBaseT RJ45 transceivers are the worst. I'm setting up a 25G switch and that's scalding to the touch with empty SFP28 cages.

They do yeah. My 40Gbps ones are very warm even when transferring minimal data. It's why I like FS.com as things are cheap to replace. lol

Yep for sure, fs.com are also my go-to for pluggables and optics/patch leads etc. Their pushing their full chassis now too, but I've not been game to try.

A few years ago I got a good deal on an EX4300 which has kept me going. I'd been buying so much stuff from fs.com that they thought I was buying for a small business/data centre. lol

Here's what they used for the DIA. It's the non 10Gbps version

Cool. Same fibre drop?

I guess they are using the same PON as their regular broadband, just keeping the 1Gbps DIA "circuit" bandwidth reserved.

Exactly. My previous line was with Vaioni. Exact same speed and latency. I have wondered what will happen as the area gets busier. So far, no change and speeds are the same at different parts of the day.

Probably not much to be fair. There will be oodles of capacity on the 10 Gbps XGS-PON "bearer" both for shared broadband (even several 3 Gbps services) AND your DIA. If there was PON congestion, its not too difficult for them to switch you to another PON.

That's what I'm hoping. Tbh I'm happy to see residents switching to them. Besides getting better internet, it's good to see CF having success. No point in having a good service and the business goes bust.

In reply to a post by roundrobin:

They do yeah. My 40Gbps ones are very warm even when transferring minimal data. It's why I like FS.com as things are cheap to replace. lol

Like it says on fs.com:
https://i.imgur.com/jLibbyt.png

Edited by candlerb (Sat 21-May-22 13:54:38)

Hahahaha. Brilliant

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Yep for sure, fs.com are also my go-to for pluggables and optics/patch leads etc. Their pushing their full chassis now too, but I've not been game to try.

Their optics are great, but their switches suck.

I bought four S3900-48T6S-R, which were incredibly cheap for 48x1G with 6x10G uplink and dual PSU. But two of them rebooted themselves after a number of weeks in service. Then one got into a state where it was forwarding packets but it was unable to send packets from the CPU - meaning no management access of course, but worse, spanning tree BPDUs were not being sent out.

They released some new firmware and these problems haven't recurred, but it's too late for me to trust them any more. They've now been moved right to the edge of the network for ILO duties only, and will probably end up as scrap.

They no longer sell that exact model, which may be as a result of problems like the above.

As far as I can tell, their switches are rebadged from other vendors, but you can't tell which switch comes from where. For example, the S3900 and S3900-R ranges are from two completely different vendors with different chipsets and firmware (see here). So you might be lucky and choose a good one, or you might get a lemon model like I did.

For example, the S3900 and S3900-R ranges are from two completely different vendors with different chipsets and firmware (see here). So you might be lucky and choose a good one, or you might get a lemon model like I did.

Mmmnm. Yeah that's not very confidence inspiring at all. I'll stick to their bread and butter.

In the hundreds of 10Gbps ports I look after none of them are hot. Warm maybe but not remotely hot. Then again there is not a 10GBaseT SFP+ in sight. It is almost all DAC cables with a couple dozen SR optics and a single BX optic

The 40Gbps ports don't seem to get hot either, a mixture of DAC and SR optics.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

In the hundreds of 10Gbps ports I look after none of them are hot. Warm maybe but not remotely hot. Then again there is not a 10GBaseT SFP+ in sight. It is almost all DAC cables with a couple dozen SR optics and a single BX optic

The 40Gbps ports don't seem to get hot either, a mixture of DAC and SR optics.

I don't and have never gotten to choose what is connected to my networks so have to handle various scenarios. I don't get to tell internal or external customers what they may plug in and how; I provide them switch ports and connectivity. Yes, this does mean some 10GBase-T, and they do get hot.

As far as SR optics go across even relatively short metro networks 3-400m doesn't really cut it.

We make extensive use of BX optics at ranges up to 30km, too. Given dark fibre even from relatively cheap providers is on the order of £300 / month it's at something of a premium.

In an ideal world, I can't speak for anyone else just me here, I'd not ever have to use 10GBase-T, I'd have abundant fibre or abundant space, cooling, power and cash for transmission equipment so no need for BiDi, or I'd hand over the WAN to someone else so that it's someone else's problem.

Sadly the world isn't ideal. We work within a budget while preserving uptime and quality and do it well.

EDIT: Information in earlier version that shouldn't have been - removed.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Sat 21-May-22 22:41:54)

In reply to a post by roundrobin:

Hi,

I'm looking to move to their 3Gbps tarrif this summer. Looking at the Zyxel router they provide , it seems to have an "SFP+ cage". I'm wondering do they supply an XGS-PON module for this which I can then plug into my own network equipment rather than use their router. I know it's a bit of a niche product but maybe someone out there has experience with it.

Cheers

I have the 3Gb service and you can plug your own device into the XGS-PON module. Community Fiber provides an SFP+ 10G-T module for both the modem and Zyxel router.

In reply to a post by jon999:

I have the 3Gb service and you can plug your own device into the XGS-PON module. Community Fiber provides an SFP+ 10G-T module for both the modem and Zyxel router.

So you're saying they supplied you with a separate ONT (e.g. Adtran) and router?

And the router uses a copper SFP+ module to connect to the OLT's RJ45 port?

This is perfect. Thanks so much

That's correct they supplied an Adtran SDX 602x, which is different to what is provided with the 1Gb service, and the router is Zyxel AX7501-B0.

The Adtran connects to the Zyxel via 2 SFP+ 10G T modules, however you can connect directly to the Adtran.

The service is very good. I've only had a couple of issues - once with a faulty Zyxel router, and the other day there was an outage for a 2-3 hours but that's only happened once in 8 months.

Edited by jon999 (Mon 23-May-22 13:37:59)

In reply to a post by jon999:

The Adtran connects to the Zyxel via 2 SFP+ 10G T modules

Ah, so that model of Adtran has an SFP+ for the user-side connection.

If it were me, I'd be pulling out both 10G-T modules and replacing them with an SFP+ direct attach cable.

I had exactly the same idea. Although the direct cables I had around didn't work. Would be interested to know if you are able to get it working.

I have DAC cables working in data centre environments. Unfortunately I'm not in the footprint of Community Fibre.

One case where SFP+ fibre modules work, but not DACs, is the Mikrotik RB4011:
https://mikrotik.com/product/rb4011igs_rm ("Note: Passive DAC ... are not supported")
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/MikroTik_wired_interf...

The implication is that unfortunately there is *some* chipset out there which isn't capable of it

In reply to a post by jon999:

I have the 3Gb service and you can plug your own device into the XGS-PON module. Community Fiber provides an SFP+ 10G-T module for both the modem and Zyxel router.

He's looking to plug the module into his own kit, not have a separate modem/ONU.

I'm not actually clear what you're saying here as you've implied above that a customer can plug the XGSPON SFP into their own device, but below said you've the 3G service and use a separate ONU and the Zyxel acting as a router only.

Appreciate it's probably me being thick but for the sake of my stupidity please could you confirm you've plugged the XGSPON SFP into your own equipment and it worked.

Post deleted by XGS_Is_On

In reply to a post by jon999:

That's correct they supplied an Adtran SDX 602x, which is different to what is provided with the 1Gb service, and the router is Zyxel AX7501-B0.

The Adtran connects to the Zyxel via 2 SFP+ 10G T modules, however you can connect directly to the Adtran.

The service is very good. I've only had a couple of issues - once with a faulty Zyxel router, and the other day there was an outage for a 2-3 hours but that's only happened once in 8 months.

I suppose that though you still have to use a 602X box for actual ONT duties, having a pluggable SFP+ LAN interface in that box, you could easily swap out the 10GBaseT for a multi/single/BiDi fibre pluggable (for distance etc.) or a 10G DAC arrangement. So actually quite a degree of flexibility there.

Update on my end.

Community Fibre came around today to perform the upgrade. They had both an Adtran and Zyxel. To my surprise, and initial horror, the Adtran was the 621X SFU. The issue there is that it uses 10GBase-T whereas my switch uses SFP+. Luckily, they had an SPF+ to 10GBase-T converter and it even worked in my Juniper switch which can be a bit special about non-Juniper coding.

It didn't work initially with my network but that was due to the network config on my side. We confirmed by connecting directly to a laptop that it was fine. Interestingly, they had a USB-C to 10GBase-T dongle for this. Worked fine on my Macbook with no drivers. Even though I didn't need the Zyxel, I asked could I keep it just in case.

When they left, and I finished work (tethering via my phone), I got down to getting it to work. I guess a bit off topic but here's what I needed to do:
1) As it is no longer a fixed IP, I had to enable DHCP in pfSense. Interesting, IPv6 now works no issue. You seem to have 1 or the other with CF.
2) I forgot to update the gateway settings which stopped everything from working.
3) When it was all working, I was still stuck on 1Gbps speed tests. It turned out my connection from Esxi to my switch was an 1Gbps connection. I changed some settings around to fix this.
4) I was getting speed tests of approx 1.6Gbps. The CPU in the pfSense VM was maxed out. I added some more CPUs in Esxi but it only hit 2Gbps.
5) I spent about 1.5 hours looking at what CPU upgrades I'd need, as well as other hardware. On a walk I realised I had Suricata on pfSense enabled. Getting home and disabling it has it now at 2.5Gbps which has me feeling much better.

It was an interesting journey. I will say their Customer Service can really make Virgin seem amazing though. Luckily, I never really have to call or email them but I dread it when I do. I just looked at the lovely BT line coming into my house and wonder will the street ever get Fibre from BT. Haha

Cool 👍

Great that you can get 2.5 Gbps through pfS on virtualised HW. Nice one.

Yeah me too. May play around with TNSR but it's been a while since I used that.

I've got the ISO for TNSR here but have-not bothered to load it up to have play

When I used it last (at launch ) it maxed out the CPU on Esxi even when doing nothing. I kept wondering why the fans kept revving up.

Why are you only getting 2.5Gbps? You should be getting around 3.5

Yeah I need to optimise things a bit more on it. When I have time I'll connect it directly to my laptop to check.

Well I'm getting 3.3GB/s with them using my own router Asus AX89X there customer service team are ok but there network team can be a bit rude.

I tested it with both Vyos and TNSR which both went to 3.2Gbps. A fresh install of pfSense still was around 2.6 to 2.7Gbps.

I did cause an issue though where DHCP stopped and I had to call Tech support about it. Finally got them to clear the Mac addresses which allowed me to get back online. I'm away for the next 2 weeks so won't be able to transition everything to Vyos until then.

Same issue I cause by trying multiple routers ended up just settling for the Asus another issue I faced was there DNS servers were strict couldn't use Cloudflare servers. But now I can after speaking with network team they did say they don't support 3rd party routers it's like I know that. Lol

Their support isn't really the best. I have kept the Mac address of the router that works and spoof it with the other routers to get around that issue. Seems to work fine . Learned that from my Virgin Media days .