It's very easy to tell as the G.Fast pods are always vented, and extensions for tie cables are not. The G.Fast pods always goes on the PCP, never the Fibre cabinet.

A 2nd fibre cabinet being installed or an existing fibre cabinet being made bigger for more capacity often requires these unvented pods on the PCP. It's there to add more space for the tie cables that link the 2 cabinets.

Like this?

http://i.imgur.com/oNiF1mV.jpg

This was added to the small Huawei a few weeks ago, I assume to increase capacity. Nothing was added to the pcp though.

Exactly that. That increases the capacity of the Huawei MA5616 from a possible 128 lines to 192 (I think).

Does it increase capacity by changing 4 x 32 port cards to 4 x 48 port cards, or does it add 2 more 32 port cards? My guess would be the 1st but I've no idea.

Edited by j0hn83 (Mon 03-Apr-17 16:02:16)

4x48 as far as I know.

64 port cards are also now available.

I believed only the larger Huawei MA5603 supports 64 port cards?
http://m.huawei.com/ilink/cnenterprise/download/HW_1...

48-channel VDSL2 board (17a, over POTS, external SPL, � supporting MELT)

Indeed. I didn't say they were for use in the smaller shells.

Perhaps in time though....

They have squeezed extra onto the two shorter cards from reading kitz and googling.

http://www.thunder-link.com/HUAWEI-MA5616_p596.html

Looks like you were all right, it's just a simple expansion for the tie cables / vdsl ports :|

In reply to a post by agnits:

They have squeezed extra onto the two shorter cards from reading kitz and googling.

Really? It looks to me like they have squeezed 12 ports onto each of the 4 linecards.

I wouldn't expect the 2 shorter cards to get involved with user lines at all.