nanog mailing list archives

Re: Enterprise GPON / Zhone Questions


From: Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2018 15:47:31 -0600 (CST)

Lower power consumption of electronics and the fact that most (not all) deployments don't need more than 10 megs 
committed to them, so share a big pipe and burst away. 1U can have 256 endpoints easily and consume less power than a 
regular switch. 




----- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 

Midwest Internet Exchange 

The Brothers WISP 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Alfie Pates" <alfie@fdx.services> 
To: nanog () nanog org 
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2018 3:34:29 PM 
Subject: Re: Enterprise GPON / Zhone Questions 


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 


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