O.R ONT Alternative

Never been one for making do with rubbish routers, offered for free or cheap. With AASIP, in part, because I prefer to use my own equipment. After a month and a half of wrangling, I finally have my CSP where I want it. Awaiting installation of the ONT.

How good are the OR ONT? I've never had any half decent equipment for "free". I am wondering if there is any alternative. What happens if it goes faulty? It's different from a master socket, because there's a lot more to go wrong. I suppose it's more like the box I had for ISDN.

I've tended to go for Heyes, US Robotics, Asus and 3Com, over the years. Around 5 or 6 yrs ago, I bought my current router in anticipation of FTTC. I expected to buy a good VDSL modem when the time came. To tide me over, I was using cheap ADSL modems in bridge mode. However I have had a lot of problems with these cheap modems. I'm actually ending up with FTTP. Does anyone know who makes the ONTs for OR? Does any of my £100 I've paid go towards the ONT, or will all of that go to AASIP?

Edited by deleted (Sat 10-Feb-18 14:09:27)

The ONT is manufactured by Huawei. The service is locked to the serial number of the ONT. It cannot be changed unfortunately.

Why �unfortunately� ? Not come across a single one be faulty in 5 years.

Less experience of the new single port version, only fitted 5 of them so far.

The ONT is provided by Openreach, not your ISP. Openreach provision the ONT to work on their network and it cannot be substituted (The openreach network has to be configured to expect a particular ONT on a particular port at the aggregation node, and the ONT to take your particular stream from the 32 available on that port, etc etc...)

The ISP will provide a router to plug into the ONT that you can most likely choose to use or not. The router uses PPPoE to communicate with the ONT.

My FTTP ISP is BT and I choose to use an EdgeRouter and UniFi APs in place of the provided Smart Hub, and connect the EdgeRouter to the Openreach provided ONT.

I've chosen not to buy a router from my ISP. I've been very happy with my Asus router. I understand that the ONT will effectively replace my ADSL modem. I will just have a PPPoE bridge to the ONT instead of one to my ADSL modem. The Edge router does look considerably more robust than my Asus. I have been considering an additional router or access point upstairs, connected via a powerline adapter, just to improve signal upstairs for the kids phones and tablets. I currently have one PC upstairs, connected to my Asus router via Powerline adapter and it seems to work fine. I was mainly just wondering about alternatives to the ONT. But if the Huewei is a good piece of equipment there is no need. If it's not possible to substitute it, then it's all academic anyway. The one major advantage to owning my own ONT, regardless of how good or bad the huewei is, would be that if there were any problem with it, I wouldn't have to go through BTW/OR. They are as infuriating as ever and I prefer to have as little to do with them as possible, to preserve my sanity.

It isn't impossible that in a few years time there could be an equivalent to 'wires-only' for fibre, as has happened for ADSL and FTTC previously, but for now the demarcation point is the ethernet socket on the HG8240/HG8110 NTE.

There are ONTs around such as the Mikrotik SFP ONU and Ubiquiti UF-Nano which support the relevant standards (GPON OMCI, ITU G.984), but it would need new provisioning processes developed to supply the device serial number to Openreach in order to be provisioned - this may be enough to stop it happening.

In reply to a post by tdw42:

It isn't impossible that in a few years time there could be an equivalent to 'wires-only' for fibre, as has happened for ADSL and FTTC previously, but for now the demarcation point is the ethernet socket on the HG8240/HG8110 NTE.

There are ONTs around such as the Mikrotik SFP ONU and Ubiquiti UF-Nano which support the relevant standards (GPON OMCI, ITU G.984), but it would need new provisioning processes developed to supply the device serial number to Openreach in order to be provisioned - this may be enough to stop it happening.

Very interesting! I suppose it's still pretty early days for FTTP. Although, BT stuff doesn't tend to change much. I've been having trouble with an old "Telecom" junction box on and off. They refused to change it. I've still got earth wires, from the old party lines. But you never know. I'll check in two or three years if anything is available.

Think of the ONT as the master socket in the pstn world, the RJ45 port marks the demarcation between openreach and the customer, obviously the ONT does more & is an active device rather than passive.

For what it's worth (based on my experience of a single port ONT for our FTTP service) unless openreach move to a model of terminating the fibre link to an outlet that you can then connect an ONT to via a fibre patch cable encouraging use of anything other than the current situation would be asking for trouble, damaged fibre cable etc from people not respecting bend radius's etc..

I don't see an issue to be honest, the back haul from your property to the local exchange should be 100% (ignoring power cuts) if it's not we don't have the issues the a/VDSL has wrt to cross talk, loose connections etc.. so getting it resolved should be straightforward (that said being able to get stats from the ONT would be handy)

I also use an ERL with FTTP, works very well.

.... but that earth wire isn�t connected to your wiring is it ?

I know of no company anywhere that operates an FTTP network as Openreach do and allow customers to bring their own hardware. Verizon don't. AT&T don't. Google don't. KCom don't. KPN don't. You get the idea.

This only viably works when either the fibre is point to point, which this isn't, or when the FTTP is in turn running over PPP, in which case restrictions to service speed can be made there.

Could also do it if there were ONTs available that, like cable modems, were locked down, had secured firmware and were controlled by the operator, not the user.

If you're okay with Openreach controlling your device and you're willing to purchase from a set list it's very unlikely but you might be able to bring your own one day.

Or you could just use kit Openreach provide which is just fine and capable of delivering a symmetrical gigabit.

Edited by deleted (Sun 11-Feb-18 01:26:41)