Re: Enterprise GPON / Zhone Questions

[Alfie Pates <alfie@fdx.services>]

The discussion was regarding an in-building LAN - residential access
networks/WANs are a wholly different beast and GPON is fantastically
suitable for that particular problem.
There is, however, a reason that a lot of new mixed-use (business &&
residential) WAN fibre deployments end up building a home-run dark fibre
network for business use and overbuilding with GPON for residential use
- the 1-1 mapping of end users to patch points/flexibility points makes
for a vastly more future-proof network.
I think we often underestimate just how long the networks we install
stick around. I ordered a 10Gbit/s service not too long ago over the
very same fibre that was used to serve 2Mbit/s connections in the mid
90s: I'm not kidding, the fibre was physically disconnected from an old,
derelict 2Mbit/s SDH network termination and plugged into a brand new
10Gbit/s EDD.
GPON is cool, definitely - I've worked on very large scale GPON
deployments before, and it is definitely a very useful technology that
allows us to affordably deploy high-bandwidth consumer and small-
business connectivity.
However - it is a compromise, and I don't think you're gaining anything
by running GPON versus the tried-and-tested method of active, switch-
based aggregation, especially compared to the sacrifices you make
deploying a passively-aggregated network.
As I said before - I wouldn't stake my reputation on it. 

~A