In reply to a post by ryan125_hst:

In reply to a post by think26872:

Let us know how it goes

I will do

Have you had an progress with your order with Squirrel? Thanks

In reply to a post by think26872:

Have you had an progress with your order with Squirrel? Thanks

My Dad ordered it on Wednesday 15th January and was impressed that, despite the lead time on Squirrel's website being given as four weeks, he could have had installed as early as the following Thursday. He chose Wednesday 29th as he has Wednesdays off.

To our surprise, there was a knock at the door at 8am on Monday 20th and it was Fibre Heroes sorting out a blocked duct. I didn't have chance to take too much notice of what they were doing but after they left at about 9:15, I opened the front door to see a fibre cable had been installed through the Openreach duct in preparation for installation. We weren't expecting that! It was great to see though as this should speed up the installation on the day.

He told me yesterday that he had received an email from "Nibbles" and the Squirrel team to confirm the installation today and saying the router will be posted following installation and will be here within 2 days. Fingers crossed all goes well with the install and we should have full fibre broadband before the weekend.

In reply to a post by ryan125_hst:

My Dad ordered it on Wednesday 15th January and was impressed that, despite the lead time on Squirrel's website being given as four weeks, he could have had installed as early as the following Thursday. He chose Wednesday 29th as he has Wednesdays off.

To our surprise, there was a knock at the door at 8am on Monday 20th and it was Fibre Heroes sorting out a blocked duct. I didn't have chance to take too much notice of what they were doing but after they left at about 9:15, I opened the front door to see a fibre cable had been installed through the Openreach duct in preparation for installation. We weren't expecting that! It was great to see though as this should speed up the installation on the day.

He told me yesterday that he had received an email from "Nibbles" and the Squirrel team to confirm the installation today and saying the router will be posted following installation and will be here within 2 days. Fingers crossed all goes well with the install and we should have full fibre broadband before the weekend.

Sounds really positive and thanks for the information.

Looking forward to how you find the connection and whether you have any trouble getting a free static IP.

Edited by think26872 (Wed 29-Jan-25 10:55:30)

An engineer from CASS (Fibre Heroes contractor) turned up yesterday at about 11:30 and installed the ONT, CSP box and attached the fibre to the outside wall. I was working so couldn't watch what was going on but my Dad seemed happy with it. The engineer put the ONT where we wanted it and Dad has run an Ethernet cable under the carpet so we can still put our router where it currently is - I'd discussed all this with him advance so he knew about the ONT needing power etc.

The only thing we are concerned about is the light level was apparently -30 from what the engineer told my Dad. He had a look at the connection to the ONT and then went into the street and looked in one of the chambers under the footpath. We're not sure if anything changed but we have two green lights on the ONT so it seems to have a good connection. I'm concerned that a video online shows -22 as being the value that they investigate at. This was for Wildanet but they also use XGS-PON so I'd presume tolerances are similar? The reading in the video was about -17. Would it even work if it was -30? Is this reading something else? Or perhaps it was that bad and he sorted it?

Squirrel have confirmed the router has been dispatched so we'll see what the connection is like when it arrives over the next couple of days.

-30dBm is very, very low. Basically too low for most ONTs to successfully receive at.

Typically the ONT will operate from -28 dBm ~ -9 dBm for receiving.

A green light can turn into a red light in future if the level is borderline.

If you log in to the admin port of the router you may find an 'Optical' section giving the levels.

The installers probably have a level at which they intervene, such as -26.

I had to call out an engineer for a flakey connection. They have a light gun they can connect to the fibre to help in tracing light leaks. In my case it was at a plug and he cleaned the face of the fibre on a special fabric that the sleeve of his jacket was made of.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

-30dBm is very, very low. Basically too low for most ONTs to successfully receive at.

Typically the ONT will operate from -28 dBm ~ -9 dBm for receiving.

That's concerning. I found the datasheet for the ONT, a Nokia xs-010x-q, and it does indeed say -28 dBm ~ -9 dBm. Hopefully he sorted the cause of the low light level and it's now better than this.

In reply to a post by Thinker27:

A green light can turn into a red light in future if the level is borderline.

If you log in to the admin port of the router you may find an 'Optical' section giving the levels.

The installers probably have a level at which they intervene, such as -26.

I had to call out an engineer for a flakey connection. They have a light gun they can connect to the fibre to help in tracing light leaks. In my case it was at a plug and he cleaned the face of the fibre on a special fabric that the sleeve of his jacket was made of.

I'll have a look when the router arrives. I guess they'll have to sort it if it's out of spec and isn't a reliable connection.

There's no way to manually review the light levels on the OP's kit. There is no accessible user interface on the Nokia ONT their ISP provides.

The only way is to either:
1. Use a discrete calibrated light power meter (I would doubt the OP or most regular folks have one at their disposal)
2. Use a user-supplied / configured XGS-PON ONT 'stick' (read SFP+ pluggable) that they could read light levels via DOM in their own supplied router. Again I don't believe the OP has this as a ready setup.

As said. It will either work or it won't. If the light levels are too poor the ONT will throw up a LOS warning.