In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

They will be more heavily contended because GPON over which the connection is delivered is asymmetric. So if it was 10-1 contended on the download it would be 20-1 contended on the upload by definition.

The Gigaclear connection I have does not use GPON. The fibre to my router is connected to a port in the cabinet. The equipment uses a proprietary protocol. Both downloads and uploads are subject to contention.

Proprietary?

Or just point to point fibre rather than GPON?

I found this description of what Gigaclear apparently use: https://www.keymile.com/en/web/keymile/gigaclear-rel...

I believe the equipment I have uses a protocol developed by Genexis who supply the equipment. I am in Kent. Other locations might be different. It is certainly point to point.

Well that suggests that they are using compact SFP's or cSFP for short. Not something I have come across before. Not unreasonably because although I deal fibre all the time with work for the last 15 years, cSFP's are a very specialised thing only available from a few vendors and their use case is not really relevant at work.

Basically a cSFP is two BiDi SFP's squeezed into a single SFP form factor. This works because the SFP standard was designed to allow two LC connectors for your normal transmit and receive. BiDi put both transmit and receive on a single fibre at different wavelengths. As a normal BiDi SFP only has a single LC connector a cSFP can put two BiDi SFP's inside the physical foot print of one. The advantage being that you double your port count on switches which saves physical space and cost. That said I pity those having to cable up a 480 port cSFP switch. Mind you I am not sure the cost savings are really their as cSFP's or two channel BiDi as they are also called are very expensive, £85 for two channel BiDi SFP at fs.com

https://www.fs.com/uk/products/75333.html

versus under £10 for a standard one.

https://www.fs.com/uk/products/75333.html

However reading the available keymile documentation it is just a plain BiDi ethernet connection and consumer premises equipment is basically a standard BiDi media converter, and you could replace it with one of your own or a BiDi SFP directly in a router. The tick will be determining whether you need a 1310nm or 1490nm (it appears cSFP's dont come in the 1550nm variety). You could either examine the Gigaclear equipment or for an extra £10 just buy one of each and try till you get link

Then it will be a case of working out what they are doing to establish the layer 3 connection. I guess the options are PPPoE (would seem daft to me), VLAN tagging, DHCP options, or possibly 802.1X. Thinking about it one of each would allow you to put a cheap managed switch with a couple of SFP ports in front of the Gigaclear equipment and turn on port mirroring and easily see what they are doing to establish the layer 3 connection.

I very much doubt that the layer 3 is established using some propriety protocol, because it would be a lot of expense for no benefit. The layer two would appear to be standards based however.

I would say for someone so minded it would be possible to ditch an Gigaclear provided customer premise equipment. I know I would be

Here's a document with some more details of the Gigaclear setup : https://715208136624-codedeploy-assets-production.s3...

It's a bit beyond my networking knowledge, but I'd welcome an executive summary.

It's BiDi Ethernet at layer 2. Layer 3 will be down to the ISP though I don't think anyone other than Gigaclear is yet offering a service. It also says the NTE is changing from a all in one thing (that is not exactly brilliant by all accounts) to a simple media converter that turns the optical ethernet to twister pair from Q4 2019. With a separate CPE (consumer premise equipment) aka router to you.

Like I said previously a managed switch could be used to work out how the layer 3 connection is being provided. This could vary between ISP's so there is no definitive method. However given it's basically plain ethernet at layer 2, I would use 802.1X for an authenticated layer 3.

I guess if you are on the older NTE and want to change to the new one you could deploy an ethernet killer to force a replacement by arranging for the existing one to die without visible damage.

Gigaclear do provide a list on their website of ISPs that use their network, but given their wholesale price list I'm not sure it will be very lucrative for them.
I don't have Gigaclear - I'm in a BDUK area where the build should be complete by the end of 2018, although Gigaclear haven't completed the network design yet so it will be a few years more before it reaches me.
As a home based IT worker superfast (or better) broadband would be very welcome, but I'm likely to retire before it becomes available.